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Do You Know an Outstanding Volunteer or Volunteering Program?
If you know of people or organizations that have made exceptional volunteering efforts to educate about agriculture, the Foundation wants to hear about it. Email us your story at [email protected] and include some pictures for us to use OR Nominate them at www.agfoundation.org, under What We Support-Volunteers. 

AFBF Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee Start the Year off Right-Educating about Agriculture!  

 

During the 2013 AFBF Annual Meeting the AFBF YF&R Committee took time to educate about agriculture in a metro Nashville middle school and elementary school.   

 

   

 

The expectation of the volunteering effort was to allow students to meet real farmers and ranchers from all over the United States while learning about their nourishment, clothing and renewable fuels. 

 

  

During the visit to the elementary school, the committee members read The Guardian Team, the Foundation's newest winner of the Book of the Year Award, to the students. Additionally, the committee members led them in several engaging agricultural literacy activities. First, students learned some new vocabulary words like: predator, socialization and flock. Then they sequenced the story together. Each activity is designed to reinforce key developmental indicators for the elementary students such as reading, sequencing, and recognizing key ideas and details. The Committee shared their own stories about their farms and ranches giving this diverse set of urban students a chance to hear first hand from a farmer what it is like to own and work on a farm or ranch.  

 

 

 "We focus so much on agricultural literacy among adults, but it's just as important among children.  Children are wonderful teachers themselves and carry so much of the information they learn at school home to their parents.  The materials we used were fantastic in teaching a lesson in way that really encouraged each of us to open up about our own farms and ranches.  I hope the kids had as much fun as I did!" said Susan Wilkins a YF&R Committee member from West Virgina. 

 

Another set of YF&R Committee volunteers went to a middle school and used the newly revised Agriculture in the Environment curriculum to engage with the students. This resource is designed to show how all agricultural and environmental decisions need to be supported by reliable, science-based information and carefully implemented in a practical manner.  

 

   

The middle school students began with the "I Couldn't Live Without" activity where they learned about how their basic necessities are all products of agriculture. Then they did the "Food Fight" activity were students learned that some species are in a constant battle to meet the basic needs in order to survive. The students really enjoyed the Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee visit and now have a better understanding of where their food really comes from.  

 

Thank you to the AFBF Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee for being an outstanding example of volunteers educating about agriculture!

 

We want your volunteering stories! Send your volunteering stories and photos to  [email protected].