It’s time for the Indiana Farm Bureau membership minute…Find your voice, become a member of Indiana Farm Bureau. Members of Indiana Farm Bureau are volunteering all over the state in many ways, including the Ag in the Classroom program which has touched over 60,000 each year the last few years. Chelsea Poe, Membership Sales and Marketing Coordinator at INFB says over 100,000 lessons, field trips and activities have covered a variety of ag topics.
“We offer program material and lessons free of charge to schools, community groups and other non-profit organizations, and a lot of that information can be found on our Ag in the Classroom program page through the national website at www.agclassroom.org or by contacting Indiana Farm Bureau directly.”
She said Ag in the Classroom is geared to teach young students about where their food comes from and food safety, “and all of those different things that maybe someone who didn’t grow up in a rural community didn’t have the opportunity to know. So we have over a hundred volunteers across the state trained to go into classrooms and teach K through 5th grade students. They learn through different activities that we provide like how soup is made and where all of the different parts of a soup could come from, from farmers throughout the state of Indiana.”
The goal is to help students understand agriculture’s role in our economy and society as a whole, students who start to learn about what constitutes wise agriculture policies. Indiana Ag in the Classroom has created a new online resource called Barntours so children and adults can learn more about ag in the state, including ag careers.
“This site contains information about Indiana’s top livestock commodities such as beef and dairy cattle, pork, poultry and sheep and teachers or families and students can all use this website to learn a little bit more about agriculture in Indiana.”
The Barntours website is https://www.infarmbureau.org/barntours/.
You can become a member of Indiana Farm Bureau by visiting the website, www.infb.org and joining online.