America's Farmers Grow Rural Education

America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Getting kids involved in science and math can be a bit challenging. Linda Arnold, Customer Advocacy Lead with the Monsanto Fund talks about their Second Annual America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education, sponsored by the Monsanto Fund.

ARNOLD: And what we’re doing is having farmers nominate their school district so they can compete for a grant of up to $25-thousand dollars. And these grants are targeting science and math.

Arnold talks about where the idea for the program came from.

ARNOLD: The Monsanto Fund is our philanthropic arm of Monsanto and a few years back we really changed our strategy from just giving back to where our people live and work to where farmers live and work. And so we wanted to give back to the communities where we do business so we went out and asked farmers what they would like us to support and they said our communities which we came up with Grow Communities and give back $2500 per county for farmers to donate back to their local non-profit organization of choice.

Another aspect that farmers were interested in was having the same opportunities for their kids in schools that kids in the cities have.

ARNOLD: We came up with the idea of working with the farmers to nominate the schools and then the schools can submit ideas and it’s a merit based program so a great idea is what is getting funded.

Tomorrow we will talk more about the program and how you can get involved.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.