FUN, FACTS AND FARMING
BY BECKY ZIMMER • PHOTO COURTESY OF IRENA CEKO
Did you know canola is a member of the Brassica family, which includes broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage and wasabi? Or, that Alberta sugar beet farmers supply eight per cent of Canada’s sugar market and one acre of beets produces 4,383 kilograms of sugar? Or that Alberta’s irrigation system consists of 8,043 kilometres of canals and pipelines?
All of this can be discovered inside the Agriculture for Life Know Your Food mobile exhibit. From May to October, it rolls out agricultural information at schools and community events. With such farm trivia as a starting point, the exhibit’s interactive learning stations address farming at the intersection of social and cultural subjects such as food security, animal welfare, environmental stewardship and even geopolitics. These important topics are presented in a fun and accessible way for kids from kindergarten to Grade 12.
Most children are disconnected from the farm sector, which makes those “I didn’t know that” moments very special, said Luree Williamson, Ag for Life CEO. “Once you start to connect them to the idea of food and this is where it comes from, they make it relevant to their own lives. That’s where they light up and start to understand more about this big world of agriculture.”
Dubbed The Ultimate Food Truck, the customized semi-trailer features four core areas: technology, production, markets and food for thought. To tell the story of Canadian agriculture, digital elements such as touch screens, video displays and interactive maps are supported by fact boards and photo panels.
Visitors play games and solve puzzles. “We’ve gamified the experience so students can have fun while they’re learning,” said Williamson. “Touch and feel and share and critically think; those are elements that we built into the program.” For example, students arrange digital puzzle pieces that represent the components of crop variety development. Conventional breeding, hybridization, genetic modification and gene editing are pieced together to tell the complete plant breeding story. Also gamified, to illustrate the role of nutrients in crop production, the rate of yield on a digital farm can be affected by nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus application rates.
To support specific topics that may be addressed in a school’s curriculum, teachers can request additional learning stations be set up outside the vehicle. Ag for Life can accommodate with displays on soil health, ecosystems, regenerative agriculture, sustainability and global food security. “The teachers like that component because it really fits within those learning outcomes they’re trying to achieve,” said Williamson. The range of topics the exhibit can address continues to evolve.
Misinformation about food production is a constant challenge for the industry, she added. For instance, where students have been told genetically modified crops are grown exclusively in labs, exhibit staff set them straight with facts. “We get the students to think critically about it and through that examination, understand why agriculture produces food in these different ways and to appreciate that they have choice. Not everybody in the world has a choice of what they eat.”
As she has travelled with the exhibit, Williamson said she has participated in many discussions with young people who are excited to support the industry and learn more about Canadian agriculture. Now in its third season, schools can book the mobile exhibit for free by visiting knowyourfoodab.ca. Additional resources are also available on the website.
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