September 1997
Minnesota Ag in the Classroom in its 12th year
by Tracy Sayler
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Prairie Grains is the
official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain
Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat,
Inc., and the
Minnesota Barley
Growers Association.
This past year, 92 businesses and organizations provided funding, volunteers, and in-kind support to M-AITC, including education groups such as the MN Education Association, and cooperatives such as American Crystal Sugar, Farm Credit Services, Cenex, and Harvest States. The private business sector is represented by such companies as Amoco, Hormel Foods, John Deere, Malt-O-Meal, Monsanto, and Dow Elanco. Cargill has a "challenge grant" to bid up the program's funding.
Virtually all of Minnesota's ag commodity groups support M-AITC, including the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, and the Minnesota Barley Research and Promotion Council, through the checkoffs for wheat and barley.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture coordinates the program, through its ag marketing and development division. M-AITC provides classroom resources, school visits, and other activities to Minnesota's K-12 education community.
Through the program, some 200 volunteers including farmers reached over 15,000 students last year in school visits with ag-related presentations.
A "flagship" activity of M-AITC is the Minnesota AgMag and Teacher Guide Series. Geared for students in grades 4-6, the AgMag is published in a series throughout the school year, exploring different crops and livestock, how food is processed and how it gets to the grocery store, land use, farm equipment, and the environment.
Colorful graphics and puzzles help kids learn about farm facts (some of which farmers may even be surprised to know) and the A-B-Cs of agriculture, such as the basic understanding that food production depends on soil, air, water, and the sun.
A Teachers Guide that accompanies each AgMag offers help on how to lead discussion on ag topics, and how the material may be integrated into different areas of curriculum, from reading, health, and math to science, social studies, history, and geography.
"We're working with elementary and middle-school teachers in about 1,000 schools. There's about 73,000 copies of each AgMag issue that is printed. It covers the state, with a lot of metro and rural use," says Al Withers, M-AITC director. "Kids like it because they can bring it home; they have ownership. And it's multi-use, in that it can be used outside the classroom for things such as youth groups and educational exhibits."
The publication has been so well-received that the M-AITC program is doing a national survey to determine interest among other states for developing AgMags specific to their state.n
AGMAG WITH A WHEAT THEME
A few facts from an issue of the AgMag in the last school year that featured wheat:
- One-seventh of all the farmland in the world is used for growing wheat, far more acreage than for any other food crop. It's the only grain whose main purpose is to feed humans and is the staple food of 35% of the world's population.
- We live in a world with about 380,000 kinds of plants. Yet only about 100 kinds are regularly grown and eaten as human food. More than half of the world's food from plants comes from only four crops. Three are grains: wheat, rice and corn. Potatoes, the fourth, are tuber vegetables.
- Our primitive ancestors ground grains into a coarse cereal, or perhaps even flour, by crushing the grains between two flat rocks. This was the beginning of the milling of wheat and other grains.
- For 50 years, Minneapolis was the flour milling hub of the world. If the flour produced in a single day in 1904 were stacked up barrel upon barrel, it would be 70 times higher than the IDS Tower.
- What country is the number one customer for U.S. ag products?Japan.The country buys $8 billion of U.S. exports each year. Soybeans, corn, wheat, beef and pork top their shopping list. This tiny island nation is 70% mountains with few natural resources. Only 15% of its land is suitable for growing food. Smaller than California, its population is four times that of California.
- Wheat is often bought and sold by the bushel. One bushel of wheat grinds down to 40 pounds of flour and yields 42 loaves of bread. The average one-and-a-half pound loaf has 24 slices.
- If you ate a sandwich for breakfast, dinner and supper, it would take about 168 days to eat all the bread from one bushel of wheat!
- Every moment of the year, some farmer somewhere is harvesting wheat as another is planting it.
For a copy of the wheat-themed AgMag, contact the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, 1-800-242-6118.n