"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day;teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Our organization is working to establish a formal college-level agribusiness and economic development concentration in the country of Romania. Our objective is to help the Romanian people prosper in the free market economy by teaching modern business principles and practices, but in the context of agriculture. By partnering with a private Christian University in Romania, we seek to combine the business perspective of food and fiber production with the technology necessary to help the people of Romania be successful. In the process, people in rural communities throughout Romania will learn how to establish commercially viable farming operations that provide economic stability and prosperity for their families, their communities and their country.
Once established, this formal agribusiness and economic development concentration that will serve as a center within the School of Management at Emanuel University.This concentration will be offered in conjunction with existing general management courses and will educate both students and practitioners (farmers) in the surrounding rural communities by teaching business management in an agricultural context.The intention is to teach Romanians how to establish commercially viable farming operations by utilizing modern agribusiness practices within a holistic and vertically integrated framework; and to teach students the entire process of growing, storing, processing, distributing and marketing their products.
In addition to classroom training, there will be working farming operations – for-profit teaching laboratories – where students can learn agribusiness best practices first hand.These operations will be owned and operated by the University and revenue from them will underwrite the ongoing educational needs of the overall program.In this way, the initiative will be self-sustaining and not rely on external annual funding.
Rural communities in Romania struggle to prosper in post-communist economy
Dr. Cepica, Dean of the College of Agriculture at Texas Tech University visits Emanuel University in Romania
Small farming operations can serve as teaching laboratories for business students
This agribusiness and economic development center will provide an academic program that combines the free enterprise business perspective of food and fiber production with the technology necessary to compete for the world’s consumers in today’s marketplace.
More than half of all jobs in emerging countries are related to food and fiber products. Population increases worldwide have led forecasters to predict that more than 11 billion food and fiber consumers will be part of the global agribusiness system by the year 2020.Forecasts also estimate that, at that time, more than 20,000 agribusiness jobs will go unfilled due to a lack of skilled professionals.This program – grounded in fundamental production and agribusiness principles, yet emphasizing best practices, marketing, management, and finance – will be designed to prepare students for a broad range of opportunities in agribusiness and economic development; and position them to contribute to the needs of their communities.In addition, the University envisions a series of seminars that will serve as an “extension service” to the surrounding community by helping to fill an immediate need for agricultural expertise.These seminars will be taught by visiting U.S. producers and practitioners who will share their life experiences and knowledge with local farmers.
