November 2001
SAREP offers guide to help farmers connect with students
Written by Marc Lavine and produced by Sibella Kraus of the Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE), the guide provides both specific activities for elementary school students and others, and serves as a resource and starting place for teachers who want to plan farm field trips, and for farmers who want to host the visits.
"In most urban areas, children know little about where their food comes from and the relationship between their own health, healthy food, healthy regional agriculture, and an overall healthy environment," said Gail Feenstra, SAREP food analyst and coordinator of the program’s Community Development and Public Policy grants. "They might read about farmers in books, but most have never been to a farm or met a farmer. If future generations are going to care about farms and farming they must be directly exposed to the people and places that produce their food. This guide helps make it happen."
Feenstra said the guide helps connect what happens on the farm to school subjects and real life—farm visits can be tied to classroom learning through math (measuring and counting activities), science (life cycles, water and sun cycles), language (writing activities about farm visits, new vocabulary), art (drawing, collage-making), social science (history of the farm, learn where produce is sold, environmental practices on the farm, maps). Children learn about the seasons, planting, how food grows, and where it comes from before it is frozen or canned and trucked to grocery stores.
The guide is available on the Internet at www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/Grants/Reports/Kraus/97-36FarmersGuide.htm
Media contacts:
Lyra Halprin, (530) 752-8664, lhalprin@ucdavis.edu
