Teaching students the importance of farming

ST. PAUL, Minn. — For 40 years, Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom has reached thousands of teachers and students across the state. Through hands-on learning, virtual field trips and free lesson plans, the program is helping to support and improve agricultural literacy.

“Using agriculture as the context for learning provides real-life connections,” MAITC Education Specialist Sue Knott said. “If we use food, plants and animals as the subject or context for science, social studies and language arts, it’s really engaging for kids.”

Established in 1986, MAITC began within the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to provide educators with tools to bring agriculture into classrooms, along with promoting a better understanding among students. Today, the program teaches the importance and impact of agriculture to more than 135,000 students and 4,500 teachers in 715 schools each year.

“We like to think of our program fitting into three buckets,” Knott said. “We have the curricular resources like lesson plans; we have the student experiences; and then we have the teacher opportunities.”

Through MAITC’s online database, K-12 educators can access a wide variety of lessons and resources that cover all types of produce, animals, farming practices and more. Online, a list of recommended books, monthly themes and videos is available as well — all designed to meet educational standards and outcomes. Teachers can then use different aspects of agriculture as examples in math, health and nutrition and other subjects.

“There’s this overall curiosity about agriculture, like how plants and animals are grown and raised, and how the raw materials they produce are transformed into food and other usable things,” Knott said. “That curiosity and interest is also a really big plus for using agriculture in the classroom, and it’s a really awesome way to connect agriculture to a skill that students are trying to learn.”

Many available resources focus specifically on dairy farms, cows, production and milk’s journey to store shelves. MAITC partners with Midwest Dairy, which provides additional supplies for students and teachers, such as the Adopt a Cow Program. MAITC also hosts a reading space and agriculture story times at the Minnesota State Fair each year, where ambassadors, authors and dairy princesses read to crowds.

“We’ve had a bunch of classrooms take advantage of the Adopt a Cow Program,” Knott said. “The classroom gets assigned a calf they get to follow and connect with throughout the school year, so it’s been really fun for many to get a glimpse into what raising a dairy animal is all about.”

Since its inception, MAITC has offered its AgMag series, a magazine highlighting nearby farmers, agricultural businesses and food producers for kindergarten through sixth grade. By sharing local examples — such as dairy farm features and milk production stories — Knott said students can make connections, learn how products go from farms to their homes and gain a deeper understanding.

Schools can become further immersed by participating in virtual field trips, which showcase agricultural careers, crucial processes on farms and the technology used. Knott said the field trips, along with AgMag, bring more awareness, exposure and engagement.

“We want all students in Minnesota to be able to see themselves in agriculture,” she said. “We try to highlight and lift up a wide variety of farmers that are using different agricultural practices, raising a wide variety of plants and animals, have different-sized farms, may have come from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds or maybe lived the first 10 or 20 years of their life in another country but are now new Minnesotans.”

Educators also have additional opportunities through professional development workshops, which share ideas on how to implement agricultural examples into everyday learning. MAITC provides hands-on experiences and farm tours through its Farm Camp program as well, which includes classroom learning, a field trip and career exploration. This allows students to connect what they’ve been learning to real-life situations.

“We’ve toured many dairy farms that have provided really awesome opportunities for teachers to have in-person conversations with dairy farmers and get firsthand experience with what’s going on at those farms,” Knott said.

Over the span of four decades, MAITC grew its reach through the success of its AgMag series, education conferences, presentations and support. It began implementing Project Food, Land and People along with Ag Day and Farm-City Week activities in the 90s. In the 2000s, the program first awarded teachers and schools Agricultural Literacy Grants.

Even as MAITC celebrates 40 years of milestones in education and outreach, its goal has remained the same since day one: create agriculturally literate students.

“An agriculturally literate student is a student who can describe how agriculture affects their life every day,” Knott said. “The experiences and opportunities that expose students to agriculture give them a taste of what it’s about and how it provides our food, clothing, fuel and all of the other things that we need to survive.”

Looking ahead, Knott said the program is always finding new ways to expand and bring agriculture into classrooms. MAITC will continue to establish new resources, legislative changes, grant programs and learning experiences to break down misconceptions and ensure students know the importance of agriculture.

“Without (MAITC), there would be a lack of knowledge or interest in agriculture, which is not a great thing in Minnesota, especially because it’s a part of our history, our current economy and culture,” Knott said. “We want to provide some baseline information, so that students and families can make choices with agriculture in mind.”