by Nicole Brini

 

“In many parts of the world agriculture is now being treated as critical infrastructure.”

 

Has the global perception of agricultural studies shifted?

Yes, it has. Quite clearly.

I think the easiest way to see it is in how people talk about it today. It’s less “agriculture” and more “food systems,” “climate,” “water,” and “technology” — essentially the same thing, but framed very differently.

From our side, the biggest signal is who’s showing up. It’s not just students from farming backgrounds anymore. We’re seeing engineers, data specialists, policy-oriented students — people approaching the field from completely different angles.

Even at UC Davis, you can see the shift structurally. One of our newer undergraduate majors, Agricultural and Environmental Technology, is built around automation, sensors, and data in agricultural systems. That didn’t really exist in the same way a decade ago.

The other big change is that people want things they can actually use. There’s less interest in theory for its own sake, and more focus on application: how do I reduce water use? How do I apply this technology? How do I run a system more efficiently? These are the questions students are asking.

In many parts of the world, especially where climate pressure is more immediate, agriculture is now being treated as critical infrastructure. That alone changes how people approach it.

 

Which regions are showing the strongest interest, and why?

Right now, the Gulf stands out — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait in particular. The reason is fairly straightforward: they don’t really have a choice. Water scarcity, extreme heat, limited arable land, and import instability are creating real pressure to rethink how food is produced.

What has been especially interesting for us is how coordinated the response is. It’s not just individual students showing interest in specific programmes. We are seeing government ministries, companies, and universities all moving in the same direction, trying to build real workforce capacity, not simply sending students abroad for degrees.

As a result, the conversation is less about “education” in the abstract and more about practical questions: how do we train people to operate these systems, how do we pilot solutions locally, and how do we scale them?

We are also seeing growing interest in parts of Asia, although for slightly different reasons — more related to scale, modernisation, supply chains, and climate change adaptation.

If you take a step back, the pattern is quite consistent: the regions under the greatest pressure, whether from climate or population, are the ones moving fastest.

 

What motivates today’s international applicants?

It depends on the level, honestly.

Undergraduates talk a lot about sustainability and impact — that’s usually what draws them in. Climate, food systems, global challenges — that motivation is real.

But once you move to graduate students or professionals, things become more practical quite quickly. People are looking for skills they can actually use: how to operate systems, how to work with data, how to make decisions.

We see students coming through sponsored programmes from genuinely rural areas, determined to improve crop efficiency back home, studying alongside young people set to inherit large agrifood companies who are equally focused on understanding what the future of agriculture will look like.

If there is one common thread across all these learners, it is that they are not looking for abstract knowledge. They want to leave with something they can apply in a real-world context.