Teaching Kids About Agriculture

Teaching Kids About Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. I grew up in a rural community. I was a town kid but with a total population of only 500 people including dogs and cats everyone was part of the farming business. As kids we knew how fruits and vegetables grew, how they were prepared and of course what they tasted like. But with today's urban environments it seems there is a growing distance between kids and food. Most kids think food just comes from a box or bag from a fast food store. Becky Morgan, executive director of Boise Urban Garden School or BUGS is trying to reconnect kids with agriculture. MORGAN: Our goals are to reconnect kids with their food both from the growing perspective and then what do you do with it after you harvest. We have a culinary component to our programs and the summer program has a farm stand too, the kids are selling the produce. They're growing it, they cooking it and they're selling it. The kids get to experience foods from the beginning to the end. MORGAN: In our experience, the seven week program is our main sort of core program, and what we see for I would say 90% of the kids we see significant changes in their willingness to try new foods, try new fruits and vegetables, interest in preparing their own food, in ownership after they've cooked and are just that much more engaged with the whole process. She says they have found that by going through the cooking process with the products they have nurtured and grown really helps solidify the kid's connection with that food. MORGAN: We've found that growing food is great and they learn a lot from that but in terms of making life changes and diet and nutrition health changes that's the really important piece. So in general we have great success with witnessing changes that happen over a period of time. As I mentioned at the onset there is a great disconnect these days between kids and the foods they eat. MORGAN: And we've discovered that in working with various populations of kids, it's just that that disconnect is pretty strong – just where their food comes from is something that I think many of us take for granted but they're not learning that. They're learning the world of processed and quick foods so teaching them some of the skills and then them knowing that they can grow some of their own food and they can make what they might consider more unusual vegetables taste good, then they want to eat them. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.