Sioux Center, Iowa –The Dordt University Agriculture Department has initiated a program change called Defender Crops, which allows students to manage 80 acres of crop land at Dordt’s Agriculture Stewardship Center. The students make production, business, and marketing management decisions regarding the land. All farming operations from planting to harvesting are completed by the students.
The students are let to make the decisions with regard to inputs, and are given advice as to the inputs from the Hull Coop agronomy team. Dale Vos, instructor of agriculture technology shares that the program pays to rent the land from Dordt and pays custom rates for the equipment used. The students also make tillage decisions.
With this new approach to the Dordt University Agriculture Department, students learn a variety of skills that will help them throughout the years, such as managing profits and losses over periods of time, which makes the program very realistic.
In the past, all decisions at the Agriculture Stewardship Center (ASC) have typically been made by the farm steward. With this new program, the department has adjusted the curriculum to give students more responsibility and hands-on learning experiences at the ASC.
