Teaching Children about Sustainble Agriculture

Children's understanding of agriculture is stuck between two notions, both of which we also often cling to as adults. On the one hand kids like to think of farms full of comfortable animals with farmers who hold straw between their teeth as they happily ride on their red tractor. The cows say 'moo' in the meadow, and the pigs perpetually roll in the mud. Children's literature is full of these images. At the same time, children have images of huge combines and fields of golden wheat, waving in the evening breeze and promising us a never-ending future of full grocery shelves.

Both of these stereotypes should be challenged and broken. The former because it does not exist, and the second because it paints an incomplete picture. Among the parts missing are the hardened, depleted soil below the combine's wheels and the tons of Midwest top soil dumped into the Gulf of Mexico every year because of erosion.

In place of these stereotypes, we should provide learning experiences that convey the complex ecosystems involved in growing food and raising livestock. Teachers and parents should emphasize the connections between healthy soils, the insect and animal worlds, plant biology, and our food.

We can show children how farmers collaborate with nature while raising crops and animals; we can teach concepts such as soil fertility building, erosion prevention, and the use of organic pest control methods.

I remember my most recent trip with school children to an organic farm. It was late last September. While I gave my small talk on crop rotations, girls and boys alike grasped at the grasshoppers and caterpillars amongst the overgrown late-summer garden paths. My lecture was mostly lost on them, but they loved the insects. Later they eagerly ate the small yellow tomatoes still on the vine, relished the dirt as they picked late radishes, and snuck around the chickens with glee to see the details of the henhouse.

When they went home, it was the memory of life that stayed with them: the life of insects, plants, animals, and humans, intertwined to provide exciting food.

In the classroom, we can replicate some of these experiences. When I present farming lessons to school children in my capacity as natural foods educator, I focus a great deal of attention on soil fertility and farm ecosystems. Students may cringe a bit at the first sight of compost. They may hesitate to touch and work with earthworm castings. But once they feel how smooth and silky the soil is that earthworms produce, they take pleasure in spreading it across their paper. When they draw me a map of a farm that can grow their favorite foods, they show me a place that is neither quaint nor monolithic. Rather, their farm has such features as habitat for beneficial insects, cover crops for building soil, and shady - not all muddy - expanses for pigs to romp and raise their young.

Finally, we should not forget the valuable lessons children can learn from a backyard garden. A nice variety of flowers and vegetables, perhaps even fruit, will attract fascinating insect life, so that kids can see bees and ladybugs at work while using non-chemical controls on the pests. They can create their own compost, apply it to the beds, and plant winter rye in September for spring green manure. Growing wheat, corn, and oats is quite easy in a backyard as well, and shows children the plants that provide the bulk of their everyday foods.

I believe it is critical that we teach our children the realities of what is necessary to grow our food. The paradigms that work for much of our society, and that penetrate the education of our children, do not hold for agriculture. When growing food, manipulation of nature is not always possible, greater technology is not always the solution, and mass production is not usually beneficial. On the contrary, an agriculture that will preserve our soil and our environment for future generations features a diversity of crops, careful stewardship of the land by knowledgeable individuals, and the ability to work with the intricacies of nature. Children deserve to know that.

The Midwest Food Connection is an independent not-for-profit educational organization. The program receives funding from Lakewinds Natural Foods in Minnetonka and the Wedge Community Co-op in Minneapolis. Over the past year the Midwest Food Connection has taught about 300 lessons in elementary schools in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Among the approximately 20 schools participating in our program are Clara Barton and Marcy Open Schools, both campuses of Lake Harriet School, and Bryn Mawr and Kenwood Schools. For more information or to schedule lessons call 871-0317 ext. 345.