By Julie Tomascik
Editor
One seed plants a new world for Texas students and brings agricultural concepts to life in the classroom.
Texas Farm Bureau’s Planting the Seed Program, now in its third year, shows students in kindergarten through fifth grade how crops go from a seed in the ground to the products they see on the grocery store shelf.
The mobile program more than doubled its reach in 2017.
This year, Planting the Seed visited 207 schools and reached more than 32,700 students with 18 presenters. Last year, the program reached about 11,000 students with nine presenters.
For Planting the Seed visits, the state is divided into seven regions: Amarillo/Lubbock, Abilene/Stephenville, Dallas/Fort Worth, Waco/Austin, San Antonio, Victoria/Corpus Christi and Laredo/Rio Grande Valley.
For each region, locals with an understanding of agriculture serve as the presenters.
Through the program, urban and rural students alike become farmers as they plant a seed in a cup. The hands-on learning helps them grasp agricultural concepts.
“The goal of the program is to show students how food is grown and the endless number of byproducts that commodities produce,” Dakota Fleming, TFB’s Education and Urban Relations coordinator, said. “I always like to tell kids that they eat corn in many other ways than just by corn on the cob. Corn goes into products like pudding, toothpaste, tomato soup and many more things.”
Throughout the remainder of the year, the students water their seeds and care for their plants. It gives them a sense of responsibility and a better understanding of the care and attention farmers give their crops.
The program curriculum for Planting the Seed is aligned with Texas teaching standards, which helps teachers incorporate the concepts into their classrooms.
Applications for next year’s school visits will open in November. The visits will start in January 2018 and run through May.