“I’ve never planted a seed before.”, “How long will it take my plant to grow?”, “If we need it we can just go to the store to buy it, why do all of this work?”, “Being a farmer is just a hobby, it isn’t a real job; like banking or law.”
These are just a couple of the quotes that I have gotten over the past few months as I had battled on how or what I was going to do as a project for Kenan Fellows. Agriculture and farming come somewhat natural to me and my family as we have a farm with animals and different forms of food, but when discussing with students about farming and receiving responses like these above made me uncertain of which direction to go that would be beneficial yet fun. How am I going to come up with something that the school community could use that would also connect to the community outside of school and be connected with agriculture.
I was thinking about what agriculture is and depending on how you view it; the definition of agriculture is “the science, art, or practice of cultivating the soil, producing crops, and raising livestock and in varying degrees the preparation and marketing of the resulting products”. But this definition doesn’t even scratch the surface. Agriculture is more than just planting a seed, watching it grow, knowing that having animals is considered agriculture; it is much bigger. So big that many adults in today’s society don’t realize how big it truly is! Think of it as a tree. Culture is the tree trunk, and the larger limbs that hold the branches and the leaves are, agriculture (field), apiculture (bees), aquaculture (water), arboriculture (trees), aviculture (birds), floriculture (flowers), horticulture (garden), mariculture (sea), monoculture (one crop), permaculture (sustainable agriculture), sericulture (silk worms), silviculture (wood), vermiculture (earthworms), viticulture (vines). All of these involve cultivating; and the production of something that we use most of the time on a daily basis.
So, how do I get children to understand the importance of why -culture is so important?
Students aren’t going to understand the importance unless they are taught why it is important. In our society where everything is just going to the store and get it as needed, they don’t see the background and all of the work it takes.
This finally led me to something that I felt was important and that everyone involved could benefit from. The experience of it all led me to see from a wider perspective on how involved agriculture or any -culture is to our way of living, and I want to help spread that knowledge to students, and the community.
When I worked at the Schiele Museum as part of my internship; the knowledge and information that they passed on to the visitors throughout the day amazed me. My favorite part was the history of the “Farm” they have on-site and the ability that visitors could see how they lived in the 1600s. They left with a new outlook on how we live just by walking through their exhibit. How much could we instill into the younger generation if a program for the school were written, a way to have hands-on activities, science, math, history, and economics surrounded by -culture. It would definitely provide the next generation with a more appreciative attitude towards those that choose a career in farming.