Our world stands poised at a significant threshold. Within the next40 years, the world's population will grow at an ever-increasing rate.Each day more people will require food, clothing and shelter. As a result,world demand for food and natural resources will double. With this increaseddemand comes growing concerns for sustainability. This growth also bringsunprecedented opportunities.

The world's pool of knowledge and technology is also expanding rapidly.One way to measure the advance of technology is to measure the time ittakes society to adopt a given technology. It took 38 years for the telephoneto achieve 10 million users in the United States. The fax machine requiredonly 22 years, the personal computer seven years, and the World Wide Webonly three years. Yet, no technology has fundamentally replaced another.As a result, our society is now experiencing "information overload."Many say the amount of knowledge in the world is doubling approximatelyevery 12 months and will continue to do so.

These rapid changes require new ways of thinking, working and interacting.If we are to sustain the world's population and its resources, we mustaddress a very critical area ­ our food and fiber system.

The United States leads the world in agricultural productivity. Thissuccess lies, in part, with our infrastructure for developing and deliveringtechnology, including agricultural education programs in our public schools.While this network of instructors and researchers has served us well, ithas begun to show signs of wear. The rate of new developments simply overwhelmthe current structure of curriculum development and educational delivery,particularly in local schools.

Rather than reacting to change as it comes "a passive approach"the agricultural education community must take a proactive stance and lookahead to develop a cohesive vision of its preferred future.

Reinventing Agricultural Education for the Year 2020, a visioning andplanning initiative, is bringing together key local, state, regional andnational stakeholders to address this critical need. These groups are sharingtheir thoughts and ideas while developing consensus on the mission foragricultural education in the 21st century.