Nate W. wrote:Dave,
After my BS degree in 1991, I worked two years in a plant physiology lab and wrote two publications on lignin biosynthesis. Two years later, through a family connection, I spoke with a senior executive at Cargil about a R&D job. She told me that Cargil will only hire candidates with a food science graduate degree, not a life science degree. She added that many food companies and paper consumer products companies, like Kimberly Clark and Georgia Pacific, strongly prefer engineering and food science degrees over the typical life science degree.
I don't see the demand here. This track seems to be overly specialized and esoteric in nature, leading potentially to periods of discontinuous employment. Many in the life sciences struggle with unemployment and underemployment due to the lack of academic positions and the specific nature of their training. Suppose a student completes his doctoral degree in Plant Breeding and gets a job at Monsanto, where is he going to get a job in St Louis if he has already bought a house and was laid-off? It seems to be a large investment of time (i.e. 5-6 yrs) and expense for a degree with such a small niche in the job market. It would seem preferable to have a degree with a broader appeal.
I have to third that. I've used to work in food science (in EU, though) and I would consider plant breeding a very, very niche market back then. And that was a decade later than what Nate W. wrote about. So I would take all those "10-15 years from now" assumptions with a grain of salt. Food science degrees (or better yet, food engineering degrees) are a much safer bet.