08/26/2008

News / Rural Minnesota Community Sparks Its Economy Through Biosciences

Rural Minnesota Community Sparks Its Economy Through Biosciences

Training young students in sciences shores up economy

By Kathryn McConnell
Staff Writer

Worthington, Minnesota -- This city of more than 11,000 people is surrounded by fertile farm land. In the early 2000s, city leaders joined by Nobles County representatives became concerned that high school graduates were migrating to larger cities for opportunities in higher education and for good-paying jobs. Between 2000 and 2007, the county's population declined 3.4 percent.

Rural population loss is common in many Midwestern counties that are not near a metropolitan area, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Worthington-Nobles community wanted to keep more young people in the area and fill its agribusinesses' growing needs for skilled workers. So it developed a plan to train science-oriented high school graduates to become industrial laboratory technicians.

The community came together to define a key economic development goal and to develop strategies to achieve it.

The community’s leaders took their training idea to Minnesota's Blandin Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes rural Minnesota's economic viability.

The model of nonprofits linking with local leaders is now imitated in communities around the world.
Lab-technician students (ASP)
Lab-technician students learn sample-testing techniques at the Agriculture/Biosciences Partnership center in Worthington.

A joint Worthington-Nobles and Blandin team analyzed the community's economic assets and identified having several agricultural biosciences companies as a strength. These companies' areas of focus include livestock diagnostics, genetic modifications of agricultural inputs, vaccine production, livestock waste management, nutrition and food safety.

The Worthington-Nobles group –- called the Agriculture/Biosciences Partnership -- then brought in Minnesota West Community and Technical College in Worthington as a partner. In 2004, Blandin awarded the college a grant to help it develop a lab-technician training center.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded Nobles and nearby counties in southwest Minnesota –- which were by then called Minnesota’s Ag Innovation Triangle -- a three-year, $5 million grant for work force and economic programs.

"In the new global economy, talent development is a key factor in each business’s and our nation’s economic competitiveness," says a Department of Labor fact sheet on the grant program.

(The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has programs supporting American rural economic development. These include loans and grants in such areas as entrepreneur mentorship, job training, support for new farmers, infrastructure improvements and conservation.)

Glenn Thuringer, manager of the Worthington Regional Economic Development Corporation, a local nonprofit business group, is one of the Agriculture/Biosciences Partnership leaders. He argues that the education system needs to get more students interested in math and science.

He told America.gov the partnership is “nurturing” both the training program and the community's biobusinesses. It is building enrollment in the tech training program, which began in 2005, getting more and younger students (8th graders) interested in science clubs, and attracting faculty from outside the area to work at the community college.

In addition to the training program, the Agriculture/Biosciences Partnership provides investment connections and management advice to new businesses and advertises the area’s biobusiness sector regionally and statewide. It can adjust its services to a business’ specific needs, Thuringer said.

Area companies that are hiring the newly trained lab technicians include those that make vaccines for livestock diseases like foot-and-mouth and rabies, and those developing improved ways to halt the spread of disease among livestock raised indoors, Thuringer said.

Source: http://www.america.gov/st/econ-english/2008/August/20080825113727AKllennoCcM0.1171533.html?CP.rss=true

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