Continuing Education Opportunity:
Agriculture in the Classroom Summer Institute—Food, Fiber & More

The 2009 Food, Fiber and More AgriCULTURE in the Classroom Summer Institute will be held June 15-19th in Fort Morgan.

The Institute begins with a general agriculture introduction showing Colorado's history and economic reliance on this industry. The connection between wildlife and agriculture are explored along with alternative or non-traditional agriculture occupations. Issues and concerns facing agricultural producers are outlined and in some cases reinforced by producers hosting the group throughout the week. Resource materials ranging from posters to classroom activity packets are provided to attendees.

The Institute is a unique graduate-level credit course offered through Colorado State University. The one-on-one involvement is possible because Young Farmers, County Extensions, county Farm Bureau members, CattleWomen and Cattlemen volunteer their time and resources to host educators and to share their areas of knowledge. Download the 2009 brochure

Cotton—More Than Blue Jeans

CottonCampus.org includes lesson plans, which take an interdisciplinary approach, using cotton as a means to enrich school subjects as diverse as math, social studies, history and even creative writing. And for younger students, there's a downloadable coloring book called ‘The Wonderful World of Cotton,’ which teaches children about the cotton industry in a fun but engaging way. The plan is for the site to expand to include more advanced agricultural resources and information for high school students and beyond. www.cottoncampus.org

New Site—Your Agriculture

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) has launched a Website targeted to consumers. The site, Your Agriculture, at www.fb.org/yourag, helps educate the non-farming public about agriculture issues, farmers and ranchers, and the food, fiber and fuel they produce.

“The average American is three generations removed from the farm and does not have a clear understanding of where their food comes from,” said AFBF Director of Public Relations Don Lipton. “We hope this new Website will help us engage in conversation with consumers about modern agricultural production while shedding light on issues faced by America’s farmers and ranchers.”

The Your Agriculture site includes a section profiling a farmer or rancher each month with an audio slide show and Q&A. The site also includes a series of quizzes to test the public’s farm IQ and a consumers’ guide to farm policy and agriculture issues. Farm fact sheets, a foodie blog and video stories from the public television series “America’s Heartland” can also be found on the new site.

Connect the Dots (Grades 2 & 3)

Where does my food come from? This kit will help your students understand where their food comes from and how successfully America's farmers and ranchers have provided that sustenance for generations. Help us connect the dots and draw an accurate picture of the food system that provides you and your students the necessities of life, every day without fail.

This integrated educational kit is designed for students in grades two and three, with portions expandable to grades one and four helps your students answer the question. The lessons in this kit will help you meet national education standards in science and social studies while reinforcing skill development in language arts and content understanding in health. The lessons can be taught in any order or can be used individually if time doesn't permit teaching all three.

For a free kit, contact Julie Moore at the Colorado Beef Council –julie@cobeef.com or 303-830-7892.

Conversations on Animal Care

American Farm Bureau has launched ConversationsOnCare.com to show why healthy animals are so important. Farmers and ranchers care because they wouldn't feed anything less than the safest food to their families and to yours. Farmers and ranchers care because without healthy and content animals, they wouldn't be in business. Healthy animals mean healthy food for you and your family.

Why is Food Supply Veterinary Medicine (FSVM) Important?

As the world's population increases, the worldwide demand for food from animals is also expected to increase by 50% by the year 2020. This, coupled with agroterrorism threats, emerging diseases and the increased globalization of the food chain, are all increasing the demand for food supply veterinarians.

Not only is the demand rising, our nation is in a critical shortage of veterinarians working to protect our food supply. Only about 17 percent of veterinarians work in food supply, including practicing veterinarians and veterinarians working for governmental and corporate organizations. This is in contrast to the turn of the 19th century, when virtually every veterinarian was a food supply veterinarian. Moreover, research forecasts a shortfall of 4-5 percent per year in the ranks of food supply veterinarians.

To find out more, including educational, mentoring and career opportunities, visit avma.org

Watershed Defenders

The Watershed Defenders middle school comic is now available free to Colorado classrooms. Visit growingyourfuture.com for downloads and orders.

Stream Side Science

The Stream Side Science Curriculum is a set of 11 water-related activities and lesson plans. This curriculum was a collaborative effort involving Utah State University and the Utah State Office of Education. These activities have been extensively tested in the classroom and modified according to teacher feedback. To find out more…

Farm To Table

What is the system that gets food from farm to table and how does this system affect the environment? In this curriculum unit, students learn about our complex and highly technological, global food system and how parts of this system interact and influence each other—critical ideas in science. This curriculum has been written for upper elementary students but the content and classroom activities are easily adapted to middle school science or family and consumer science students.
To find out more…