Swine Jobs School helps prepare workers in pork production

[Robbien]

Source: Michigan Live

The Michigan State University Extension Service is offering classroom instruction and hands-on learning at local swine farms.

. . .

During the first two weeks, students will meet for eight sessions, combining classroom instruction and on-farm supervised training. The sessions will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 7-10 and Sept. 13-16. During the next nine weeks of the school, students will spend 16 hours per week gaining on-farm work experience on local swine farms.

Jeff Taylor, production manager for Circle K Family Farms LLC and Lafayette Pork Production LLC, said graduates of the school have a better opportunity for employment and success on the job.


Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/08/swine_jobs_school_in_schoolcra.html

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This is very telling about how sad the state of employment must be in Michigan. People are paying for their own training for jobs on factory pig farms.

[L0oniX]

1. What about milking cows and plucking chickens or corn shucking?

We need more college degree professionals for these jobs. That's the way they can pay off the student loans quicker.

[Robbien]

2. Guess the chicken factory farmers didn't donate to the college

Pig factory farmers figured the best way to cut training costs is to have potential employees pay for their own training.

Chicken factory farmers haven't gotten that slimy yet.

[zogofzorkon]

3. It is actually the purpose of a university extension service.

Believe it or not agricultural colleges offer many courses in practical farming and bringing this knowledge and training to people who will be working on the farm seems a good idea to me. Read the mission statement of Cornell dept of Animal Science http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/about_ansci.html

[Robbien]

5. This class is more like on the job training

They spend two weeks in class learning about pigs, then nine weeks on the job.

The Cornell mission statement describes a situation where a student learns about farming, then after education gets to have applied training at farms.

One is education, one is just training for a specific job.

[amandabeech]

4. I'm going to bring this up next time someone whines that Americans won't do dirty jobs.

Non-hispanic citizens have been doing nasty jobs since the U.S. was open for business.

It's just that most people here and most people making decisions and in the media have never met any of them.

Well, I think that some of the folks I mentioned should head out to Michigan to see people pay money for learning how to do it.