Ag tour connects businesses to employees of the future

by Joey Chenoweth | Maricopa Monitor

It’s an age-old problem in Pinal County: How do you keep the most talented of the area’s youth in the county instead of fleeing for larger opportunities elsewhere?

The most obvious solution is to provide well-paying jobs that also satisfy the young people’s ambitions when it comes to working on a larger scale. This is a perplexing proposition for some businesses, however, because they have those high-paying jobs that have global impact, but they have a difficult time finding local prospects to fill them.

“It is virtually impossible,” said Eric Wilkey, president of Arizona Grain in Casa Grande. “You pretty much have to go somewhere like California or the Midwest to recruit. There hasn’t been a ready pool of people at a professional level who have had higher education. There is an adequate workforce, if you want to get somebody to operate heavy equipment and work in the field, but with management and operations, it’s hard to fill those slots here in Arizona.”

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