Thanks very much for having us here today, guys.
As one of Canada's premier youth leadership organizations, 4-H serves more than 26,000 members across Canada between the ages of 5 and 21. The 4-H program itself, as many of you might know, began in the late 1800s in the United States. In an effort to teach new and innovative farming practices, university extension agents looked to youth as the future for growth and development in the agricultural industry.
In Canada, the 4-H program began in 1913 in Roland, Manitoba, and it has since had more than two million Canadian youth take part in the program. For almost 100 years, the 4-H program has had a proud legacy of creating Canada's agricultural and non-agricultural leaders.
The Canadian 4-H Council, which we represent, began in 1933 to oversee 4-H in Canada. As a council, we've endeavoured to find out the importance of the 4-H program and how members benefit from their involvement.
In a recent study done about four years ago, we surveyed 4-H alumni and found out a number of really important findings, that 40% of all 4-H alumni currently work in an agriculture-related job; 82% of the alumni with a secondary school education, which was 22% of those surveyed, grow or produce agricultural products; overall, 31% of all 4-H alumni have a bachelor's degree or higher, versus 18% of the 2006 Canadian population; and 43% of 4-H alumni have had household incomes of $50,000 to $99,000, versus 32% of the 2006 Canadian population. Another 16% of those surveyed had household incomes of $100,000 or more.
We're very proud of these statistics. It's clear that 4-H plays a critical role in developing these future leaders of agriculture.