Spokane Community College has been preparing students for careers in agriculture for over 50 years.

SCC offers six different programs that fall under the agriculture umbrella: agriculture business, agriculture technology, arboriculture urban forestry, greenhouse/nursery, landscape management, and small farm production.

Each of the six programs has options for two-year associate in applied science degrees or one-year certificates.

Total enrollment across the agriculture programs ranges from 85 to 120 students each year, says Cindy Deffe, an environmental sciences instructor at SCC who teaches a variety of classes across the agriculture programs.

“We’ve always had really strong numbers,” says Deffe, who has worked at SCC for 25 years. “I think we dropped off a bit right after COVID ... but we’re back in higher numbers than we were just before COVID.”

Even with the strong enrollment numbers, SCC alone isn’t able to meet the current demand of the industry, Deffe explains.

“We end up with more people, more companies looking for our grads than we have grads available,” she says.

That high demand is expected to continue growing as more baby boomers retire in the coming years, Deffe contends.

To determine which courses to offer, industry trends, and the skills that its agriculture students need, the community college engages in ongoing communication with industry professionals through its industry advisory boards.

The nearest schools to offer comparable programs are Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington, and University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, she says.

The majority of SCC agriculture graduates who want to pursue a bachelor’s degree transfer to WSU or UI, Deffe adds.

Deffe, also a certified arborist, teaches classes in pest management, plant problem diagnosing, weed biology, soil management, and more.

SCC's agriculture business program, which was introduced at the school in 1968, incorporates both agriculture and business classes into its curriculum.

The program has options that cater to the many students who come from rural areas, Deffe says.

“We have it set up so you can take the whole first year of ag business online,” she says. “Because we have students from Colville, and Republic, and Ione, and Pullman, it’s just easier if they don’t have to drive all the way to Spokane every day.”

A lot of the ag business students attend the program so they can take over a family-owned farm someday, Deffe says, while others may become certified crop advisers, agricultural inspectors, farm product buyers and purchasing agents, or fertilizer and pesticide professionals.

“It’s just a whole gamut of different jobs in the agricultural area,” Deffe says.

The agriculture technology program, as its name suggests, deals much more with concepts like GPS and GIS technology, maps, aerial photos, variable rate technology, and the use of drones to monitor crops, Deffe says.

“A lot of the companies that do crop advising or pest management in any way and a lot of the government agencies are really looking for people with more of these computer skills,” she says. “There’s a really high demand for these career options.”

Agriculture technology offers fewer online options than other programs because students often work with computers in the classroom, taking a more hands-on learning approach.

The arboriculture urban forestry program creates career opportunities for aspiring foresters and urban and regional planners. The greenhouse/nursery program may lead to careers working at or opening commercial florist businesses, and the landscape management program creates opportunities for students to become landscape architects or groundskeepers.

The small farm production program, which was introduced in 2018, was created following the requests of students who wanted to learn about farming on a smaller scale, often focusing more on fruit and vegetable production, Deffe says.

“Some of them just want to grow food for themselves and their family, and they want to do a lot of freezing and canning and really become self-sustaining in many ways,” she says. “But we also have students that have a market garden—some of it’s you-pick, some of it they’ll harvest and take to farmer’s markets, or they’ll have a farm stand by their farm.”

Small farm production students go on farm-visit field trips every Friday.

“The instructor always interviews all the students, finds out what their interests are, and then tries to tailor the field trips around what those students really want,” Deffe says.

SCC also belongs to the Professional Agricultural Student Organization, through which students are able to compete in a variety of agricultural events at the state level.

“Once the students place in state, they may qualify to go to the national competition,” Deffe says.

Before she began her quarter-century-long teaching career at SCC, Deffe worked for the Washington State Department of Agriculture as a pesticide investigator for five years.

“I loved working for the Department of Ag, but I was kind of the pesticide police, and it really wasn’t my personality,” she says. “I love doing the teaching part.”

Deffe had an additional 13 years of industry experience prior to the pesticide investigator role.

“Food production and food safety are so critical,” she says. “We really need to be able to grow our own food to the best of our ability, and local food is fresher, it’s more nutritious.”

Spokane Community College, which is part of Community Colleges of Spokane, is located at 1810 N. Greene and was established in 1963.

Community Colleges of Spokane also includes Spokane Falls Community College. Combined, the two schools had about 8,400 students enrolled during the spring quarter of 2024, according to the Journal’s most recent Colleges & Universities list.