The problem: 

With the decreasing numbers of farms in the county, the younger generation is not being exposed to agriculture as much. Most of them do not even know what the word agriculture means until you say words like "farming, "animals", "gardening", etc. I wanted to take the notion during March, National Agriculture Month, to go into the classrooms and teach grades 1-5 about different types of agriculture. 

The educational program response: 

I utilized the Ag in the Classroom lessons on Virtual Field Trips that covered 10 different agriculture commodities that we have in Kentucky. Those commodities were Beef, Dairy, Soybeans, Corn, Horses, Pigs, Vegetables, Apples, Chickens, and Wheat. Each child received a passport (1st and 2nd grades were a coloring book passport, and 3rd, 4th, and 5th had a writing passport) that they completed as we went through each commodity. I covered the commodities over the course of 3 weeks and then on the 4th week the kids were rewarded by making ice cream in a bag and relating that to what they had learned during the month. 

The participants/target audience:

Youth in 1st - 5th grade at Robertson County School. 

Other partners (if applicable):

The teachers were very welcoming and excited for their classes to learn about this topic. 

Program impact or participant response:

At first there were only a handful in each classroom that knew what Agriculture was. Those kids had parents/grandparents that owned and/or operated a farm. However, once we started watching the videos and talking about each commodity they all started to realized what all agriculture was and how they could identify different parts of it. I had each child fill out an "ice cream ticket" that asked them to write down at least 1 new thing they learned while completing the passport field trips with me. Here are some of the results:

• Youth learned that there are two different types of cows that each have different purposes (beef and diary)
• Youth learned that there are different types of corn - not just corn that we eat but also corn grown for livestock feed, decoration, and popcorn
• Youth learned how pigs are trained to show in 4-H/FFA livestock shows
• Youth learned that there are different purposes for chickens - meat, eggs, or dual purpose
• Youth learned how cows are used to make several products besides meat, like tires and lipstick
• Youth learned that soybeans can be made into fuel, candles, and crayons 
• Youth learned about the ways you can use crops to conserve the soil
• Youth learned there are over 200 varieties of apples and that most apple trees take at least 3 years before you can harvest any apples 

Participant Stats:

White – 154

Hispanic – 2

Black – 3

Female – 78

Male – 76