Agriculture education: new ideas fall on fertile ground

This from Madelynn Coldiron, KSBA Staff Writer.

When agricultural education was established more than 100 years ago, it was focused on production, reflecting an agrarian society, said Curt Lucas, program consultant for agriculture education at the Kentucky Department of Education. When food production became more efficient, the percentage of the population directly involved in actual farming fell.

Enrollment in high school ag programs began to drop in the early to mid-’80s, Lucas said. The state education department revamped the curriculum in the late ’80s-early ’90s to expand course offerings and move away from the traditional program – which Lucas describes as "Ag 1, Ag 2, Ag 3 and Ag 4."

Those traditional offerings have been replaced by 34 courses in six career majors, aligned with Kentucky’s core content. Currently, there are 140 agriculture programs and 250 ag teachers in the state. Those teachers now have a resource in a state-of-the-art Web-based curriculum.

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Students involved in the agriculture program at Nelson County High School raise and sell plants in the school greenhouse, landscape school grounds, teach primary students about food sources, and learn about ag marketing, horticulture, turf management and biotechnology.

It’s a long way from the three or four basic agriculture classes that school board Chairman Adam Wheatley took when he was a student there. Wheatley, a Farm Bureau insurance agent and a farmer with an animal science degree, echoed a slogan of the FFA: "It’s no longer sows, cows and plows."

Sixty percent of the students in the Nelson County ag program are girls, an evolution that began around the time that course offerings expanded. And while girls make up nearly all the floral design class, they also dominate the enrollment of the freshman ag science class.

"It’s a lot of hands-on and you get outside the classroom," said sophomore Mallory Downs. Senior Jane Graham said her classes in agriculture sales and marketing and ag communications have prepared her for a future career in advertising and graphic design.