LRLT had the opportunity to spend last week working with a wide variety of other individuals and organizations to celebrate one of Lemhi County’s cornerstone industries–AGRICULTURE. Sixty-three volunteers worked together to provide educational programs to the school in Leadore, Tendoy, Carmen and Salmon, along with ag trivia contests, community blackout bingo and a free breakfast.
This year’s highlight was the opportunity to utilize Idaho Farm Bureau’s “Moving Agriculture to the Classroom” (MAC) trailer, which gave students the opportunity to grind their own wheat, which was then made into pancakes, milk Maggie the milk cow, make their own butter to go with their pancakes & learn about livestock byproducts & how we use them in our everyday lives. For our contribution, LRLT had the opportunity to dissect Snickers bars & create an “Ag Web” with Salmon 5th graders, help with the MAC trailer at the Salmon 3rd & 4th grades & visit Salmon High School classrooms to talk about beef production in Lemhi County.
So why the extensive effort to educate the youth in our community about agriculture? After all, it’s a cornerstone industry in our county & cows outnumber people 7:1, presumably our kids should be familiar with agriculture. While Lemhi County kids are arguably more familiar with agriculture than their inner city counterparts, our area is experience the same trend as the rest of the country–more & more families are moving away from the farm or ranch, leaving their kids less familiar with a connection to where their food comes from. Additionally, Ag Week provides a chance to educate youth about the diversity of agriculture. By virtue of our short growing season and 92% publicly owned land, agriculture in Lemhi County is dominated by cow – calf beef cattle operations and our only crop is the hay raised to feed said cattle, often times leaving youth with an equally limited idea of what agriculture encompasses. Ag Week serves to help close that knowledge gap & provide youth with a much more diverse perspective on agriculture & most importantly the role in plays in their everyday lives.
