Sen. Roger Marshall made a brief visit to the Barton Community College campus Wednesday morning, where he toured the Ag and Transportation Complex. Before leaving for his next stop in Sterling, Dr. Marshall also visited privately with Great Bend City Administrator Logan Burns and City Council member Jay Luerman.
The city officials reportedly visited with the senator about the wastewater treatment plant. They also met with Sen. Jerry Moran when he visited the Ag and Transportation Complex for a similar tour on March 5. At that time, Moran announced congressionally directed federal funding of $425,000 to support the purchase of equipment for the technical education programs at the complex.
Dean of Workforce Training and Community Education Dr. Kathy Kottas said part of that money will go toward another truck for the Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) program. The next truck will have an automatic transmission.
“Three years ago there was a huge shortage of drivers,” Marshall noted. “Is that gap being closed now, or is it still a big issue?”
CDL Coordinator Tim McKiearnan said the need is still there. Many of the Barton students already have jobs lined up once they get their CDL licenses. Beginning salaries locally start at $40,000 to $60,000 a year, but with some experience they can be over $100,000 a year.
Marshall was also interested in training opportunities for someone finishing a military career at Fort Riley. Vice President of Instruction Elaine Simmons said Barton has a full staff at Fort Riley, where student services employees review Army transcripts daily. “We give out more military articulated credit as a community college than any other community college there,” she said.
The next stop on the tour was the Top Tech program, where students receive entry level training working on farm equipment. Students earn Level One certification in the Case New Holland system and can go to work for an implement dealer. Mark Bogner is the CNH technical training coordinator; his Level II classes are only available to students who work for a CNH dealer.
High school students who can dedicate their full mornings to the program can get the same Level One training as any other student and have no debt when they finish.
Next Marshall met with Dr. Vic Martin, who teaches a variety of agriculture classes and is in charge of the scales program. Then he stepped outdoors where there are livestock pens for hands-on training.
As Bogner described the technology behind modern tractors, Marshall shared an analogy.
“We all have an IT officer now (in all types of business), and now you need these IT techs being able to keep the farm equipment running,” he said. “When my grandfather was born, 30% of Americans worked on the farm to feed this country. When I was born, 10% of Americans worked on the farm to feed this country; today only 2% of Americans work on the farm, and we’re feeding a third of the rest of the world as well. And this is due to technology.
“And the real beauty of the technology is, if you care about the environment, we’re learning to grow more with less. We’re using less water, we’re using less fertilizers, and that’s the great thing, I think, about technology.
“So the last Farm Bill, we tried to fund high-speed internet (for) rural America,” Marshall said. “As we do a new Farm Bill, I’m trying to laser-target CRP buffers around the fields, especially if you have a creek running beside that.” The big advantage of technological advances, he said, is a decrease in input costs for producers and making things a bit better for the environment – “That’s the win-win opportunity.”
