The project brings together the farmer networks and interviewing/storytelling capacities of Black Soil (Ashley Smith) and Need More Acres Farm (Michelle Howell) with the technical expertise of Agricultural Education (Stacy Vincent & Dallas Cooks) and Community Development Extension (Nicole Breazeale) at UK. It is funded by a $80,000 Southern SARE Professional Development Program grant (Breazeale-SUB00002624) and a $2500 Food Connection Student Opportunity Grant.  

The project involves developing an interactive curriculum and providing professional development to equip middle school agriculture educators and 4-H Agents at KSU and UK to teach about inclusive local food systems. Employing a storytelling pedagogy, we developed ten lessons built around digital stories that center black Kentucky farmers and a racially diverse array of local food systems professionals. Youth ages 11-14 are the target audience for this curriculum. As they move through the lessons and collaborate on a social action project, they gain knowledge about local food system, but also learn to appreciate the value of diversity while taking steps to build an inclusive and sustainable system. The project also seeks to expose Kentucky youth to a range of career paths in agriculture and local foods. 

This last year, the project was piloted broadly across the state. On July 20, 2023, the curriculum was introduced to middle school agriculture educators at the annual Kentucky CTE conference during a two-hour workshop. Teachers were introduced to the videos and lessons and had an opportunity to try out activities and explore how the content and conversation might develop differently in light of the needs and lived experiences of differently positioned youth in their classrooms. 11 educators attended the training. 10/11 rated the training “very good” and noted they learned “a lot” about how to educate youth about inclusive local food systems. On December 19, 2023, a similar half-day workshop was provided for 4-H Agents in Lexington. 7 agents attended the training. 75% of attendees rated the workshop as “very good” and 25% as “good.”  

In total, 7 Agriculture Educators and 4 Extension Agents piloted the curriculum, reaching more than 1200 students around the state. Evaluation results from the 6 teachers and 4 agents who filled out the pre-test and post-test and participated in focus groups are summarized below.  The agriculture education version of the curriculum is available at: https://cld.ca.uky.edu/food-farming-and-community.  The 4-H version is going through revisions and peer review before it is released and shared more broadly. A UK Now story on the project will be published in the coming weeks.

Agriculture Education

Teacher/school/county demographics (population size: 6 middle school teachers):

1. 2 teachers of color; 4 women educators; 4 metro counties & 2 rural counties; 5 schools with more than 60% low-income students; 2 schools with more than 40% students of color; 3 classrooms with 10% or less of students already exposed to farming
2. 1123 students were exposed to the curriculum
3. The major areas of growth in educator’s knowledge as indicated through the pre-test and post-test survey were: local food systems, Kentucky Double Dollars, Community Supported Agriculture, and how to work with underrepresented students
4. Educators were very pleased with the curriculum overall and felt that it helped students from different backgrounds get excited about gardening/farming and local foods, fostered food systems literacy, and developed interest in addressing lack of access to fresh food (one of the social action projects involved developing local food boxes for low-income students through the school’s Family Resource Center).  

4-H Agents 

Educator/student demographics (population size: 4 Agents):

1. 1 teacher of color; 3 women educators; 2 metro counties & 2 micro counties; 1 class of students with more than 30% students of color; 1 class of students with 10% or less of students already exposed to farming
2. 112 students were exposed to the curriculum
3. Educators were also pleased with this curriculum, although it was more difficult to get through the curriculum given that Agents do not often have 8-10 opportunities to work with the same group of students and move them through all the lessons (Agents thought it would be hard to recruit through a club, thus it was better to partner with schools and teach part of it in that context). They liked the interactive activities but found the videos less useful in a 4-H context.