Studying Agriculture in School Essay Example

Many people hold on to the belief that agriculture is based around raising crops and livestock, and even among those who have superior knowledge in the field, some find that teaching agriculture is inconvenient. With cities growing larger and more students moving into urbanized areas, their exposure to agricultural pursuits is declining. These events reduce the ambitions of becoming agriscience teachers for many people and makes students less likely to enroll in agricultural classes. But agricultural education has been and still is increasingly important. According to Carolyn Orr, in an article for The Council of State Governments entitled “Concerns about the Lack of Agricultural Literacy,” “One concern among lawmakers is that a lack of understanding about agriculture — and its importance to the economy and people’s everyday lives — erodes support for it.” Essentially, agriculture education in and out of the classrooms is necessary because of the major role the industry plays in everyone’s daily routines. Furthermore, people are left thinking that their food comes from the store, not knowing where it was grown (“No Idea Where Food Comes From”). Because of these repercussions, agricultural education is essential and should be universally available for maximal benefits.

The National FFA Organization avers that in many high schools around the United States, students are used to participating in the three core areas of their school’s agriculture programs, which usually include classroom and laboratory instruction, supervised agricultural experience programs, and FFA (formerly known as Future Farmers of America) organized activities (“Agricultural Education”). However, not all schools implement FFA and other agricultural-related programs into their curriculum, tolerating their students to have a misunderstanding about what is and what isn’t considered agriculture. For example, an article “Students Have No Idea Where Their Food Comes From” for the Washington Post stated, “A team of researchers interviewed students at a school in a city in California. They found that more than half of the students didn’t know pickles were cucumbers. They did not know that onions and lettuce were plants. Four in 10 didn’t know that hamburgers came from cows. And three in 10 didn’t know that cheese is made from milk” (Newsela). In addition, many people don’t know that agricultural education expands out to the career and technical education fields such as welding or mechanics. To solve these problems, schools should implement an education-based system that gets each student involved in one of the many agriscience topics through community programs and recruitment strategies.

Community programs that are organized outside of the classroom and themed around agricultural subjects such as floriculture, animal science, agronomy, and others will allow students of any age to learn about agriculture beyond farming without the pressure of academics on their shoulders. Being outside of the classroom could enhance a student’s interest in agriscience because they are gaining personal experiences about the matter. An urban farm on Governors Island in New York City has worked hard and had success with such measures. “The GrowNYC Teaching Garden at Governors Island is a one acre urban farm that aims to engage, excite, and educate its visitors — many of whom have never seen how food is grown — in all aspects of urban farming” (Wang, “Inspiring Urban Farm”). The farm also allowed students to plant and harvest fruits and vegetables, giving them real life experiences about what it would be like to have a career in food production. Such initiatives increase student engagement and their general knowledge of agriculture.

With the creation of these additional programs comes the need for volunteers to teach those that learn better outside of school. That is, volunteers from the community will need to be proficient in different agricultural topics and know why they are important if they do not already know for themselves. Students tend to not be as attentive when the teaching material is not interesting or clear. According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, such mishaps occur in rural North Africa where young people are not properly educated on the different outlooks of agriculture. They wrote, “Young people are usually not interested in this field of work, in large part due to their perception of farming being antiquated” (“Youth Leaving Farming”). Such problems can be avoided through learning the details of modern agriculture.

As students graduate from their educative excursions each year, clubs and programs need new members to fill in their empty spaces. To help these vacancies get filled, students already involved in their school’s or community’s agriculture program can recruit their classmates to join. Such work can be done by visiting different classes or going to middle schools and presenting the benefits of agricultural education. By doing this, mutual interests can be found among peers. Dr. John Sullivan said in his article “Peer-To-Peer Recruiting Really Works” that peer-to-peer recruiting is successful because of the honesty and straightforwardness that can be exchanged between peers. Other reasons this method works in recruitment is because recruiters are already familiar to the candidates, which creates a sense of trust. As a result of peer recruitment, agricultural organizations and programs are able to spend less of their budgets and time on advertising their group while getting more members to expand their view on agriculture fields.

Critics of agriculture often cite the wasted resources, high costs, and poor farming methods used that harm the environment, but new ways of using technology and sustainable agriculture are making farming methods more efficient and less damaging to the land. These new techniques are the results of people who have been educated in the agriculture industry. To keep agricultural pursuits strong in the United States, the youth need to be learning about agriculture either inside or outside of school. Without educated people in the field of agriculture, the world will not be able to produce the needs of the growing population.