Grainswest - Winter 2024

Winter 2024 Grains West 12 THE FARMGATE WHEN RAYANN CAMPMANS signed up for the Picture Butte High School agricultural program, she and her fellow students knew they had to take an active role in directing and building the new initiative. They loved the idea of farm-based learning, but feared the program would be discontinued if it didn’t go over well. They pitched in to support the project. Now a Grade 12 student, Campmans’s family operates a dairy farm near the town of Picture Butte. “I love my farm life,” she said. “I figured if I could help expose kids in our school who don’t have that experience, that would encour- age students to come and enroll in our school. Especially because it’s a small town, and we lose a lot of kids to the big city.” The town is located just north of Lethbridge. As she and her schoolmates hoped, the farm program took off. From a school population of about 140, it drew 34 students in 2022, and this year, 56 signed up. To help build its program, the school applied to take part in the creation of the FarmEd Toolkit, a farm-based learning guide. Developed by the Rural Develop- ment Network, it took inspiration from a very successful school farm project at Altario School located in north-central Alberta near the Saskatchewan border. The Altario program revitalized the school, which had teetered on the edge of closure, so Rural Development suspected its approach could work in additional rural communities. Launched with a tulip garden project in 2016, the agricultural ambitions of Altario School bloomed to become the Altario Agricultural Academy in 2020. The school’s student-led farm is the hub of numerous learning activities. Adjacent to its playground, its farmyard facility houses livestock such as chickens, turkeys, geese, pigs, sheep and cow-calf pairs. With $300,000 in funds from sources that include the Prairie Land Public School Division, the school also recently added a modular, containerized hydroponic oper- ation in which students grow leafy greens such as Swiss chard, herbs and lettuce. While students in grades one through six act as farmhands, those in grades seven to 12 assume leadership positions, and their agrarian projects are tied to career studies. Morning chores are followed as needed throughout the day by tasks such as cleaning pens and fetching feed. Students are encouraged to think of farming as a river where its opposite banks respectively represent educational value and sustaina- bility. The farm activities symbolized by the flow of water are defined by the students. “That’s how we got into the pig business,” said Kevin Van Lagen, the school’s princi- pal and initiator of its farm program. “The students decided to trade four lambs for six pigs.” And, as on any farm, the students market their products and roll the profits back into the operation. “We really thought there would be opportunity there for other rural schools to implement similar experiential learning initiatives with school farms,” said Lisa Belanger, Rural Development CEO. Farm-basedstudiesonthe rise New FarmEd Toolkit can help schools build ag-based programs Intern Meike Wege (right) led the Picture Butte High School garden and compost projects. Students now also raise chickens and fish and operate a greenhouse.