What is an Ag Engineer?

When I was deciding what career I wanted to pursue in my life, a very wise man once told me that there are three fields that would never run out of demand for work: military, healthcare, and agriculture.  The world is a dangerous place and will always need defending, people will always need healing from illness and disease, and the world will always need to eat.  With this advice in mind, I ultimately chose to pursue a career in agricultural engineering.  But just exactly what is agricultural engineering?

Agricultural engineering is a field that connects science and technology to agricultural production and processing.  It takes all the skills connected with mechanical, electrical, civil, and chemical engineering, and combines them with knowledge of agriculture ranging from animal and plant biology to basic principles of raising crops and livestock.

Agricultural engineers are also charged with many different tasks.  One of the jobs that comes to mind most quickly probably is the designing of agricultural machinery and equipment, but that is not all they do.  Ag engineers also evaluate resource management, including land and water use.  They look at soil management and conservation as well as climatology.  They help with waste management, including animal waste, agricultural residues, and fertilizer runoff.  And agricultural engineers also examine the food production process from seeding and tillage, to harvesting, to livestock production, to food engineering and the processing of crops and all other agricultural products.  They develop and supervise the construction of ways to store crops and house livestock.  They also plan and supervise the implementation of irrigation and water control systems.  They also assess the impact of agricultural practices and processes on the environment and interpret their findings to help implement improved practices in each process.

The specific strain of agricultural engineering that I am looking to get into is test engineering.  As a test engineer, my responsibilities would include, as the name implies, the testing of new equipment to make sure it is fit for use in real world applications.  When new products are designed, and the first prototypes are built, test engineers take a look at the products and put them to work.  Through any number of tests, ranging from laboratory tests, to computer software tests, to field tests actually using the products out in their intended environment, test engineers determine how efficient the product is and how much wear and tear the equipment can take before it would break.  If it does break under normal conditions or if it is not efficient enough, then the test engineers go back and take a look at how and why those things happened and what ways can it be improved.

As you can see from the extensive list of responsibilities shared by agricultural engineers, they are very important in the process of producing food and products to feed and clothe the world as well as the countless other uses for agricultural products.  It is their job to make sure all processes are as efficient and as effective as possible, being able to produce massive amounts of product with minimal losses or cost and time constraints.  Without agricultural engineers, the development of food and other agricultural products would be much less efficient and feeding the world would be that much harder than it already is.