The Angus Journal® is a monthly magazine known for in-depth coverage of American Angus Association® programs and services; the Angus business; herd management; and advertising reflecting genetics and herd philosophies.
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132 ■ ANGUSJournal ■ March 2017 @ Children attending Colorado State University's Ag Adventures program at the National Western Stock Show love learning meat cuts with Trailer, the Colorado Beef Council's model bovine. National Western and CSU team up to give city kids an education. Story & photos by Shelby Mettlen, assistant editor - Ag Adventures T he classroom is where you'll fi nd most elementary-age students on a typical weekday, but for a few lucky Denver school districts, you won't fi nd them there during the National Western Stock Show (NWSS) in Denver, Colo. A steady stream of bright, smiling faces pours into the third fl oor of the Events Center at the NWSS as kids in fi rst through sixth grade attending urban school districts in the Denver area visit the stockyards for a day of agricultural education. Melanie Calderwood is an academic success coordinator with the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics at Colorado State University (CSU), and it's her job during the NWSS to help urban kids embrace agriculture. "The goal of the program is to educate our urban friends and neighbors about agriculture," she says. "A lot of these kids know they have food, but they don't know where the food comes from — they've never seen a cow, they don't know that potatoes are grown in the ground; so it's really a great place for us to educate them on where their food comes from." Ag education The program, called Ag Adventure, has been part of the NWSS for about 20 years, Calderwood says, but 2017 was the fi rst year for agricultural education at CSU to play a signifi cant role. "We took it over as faculty and staff to engage our students at a different level," she explains. "We have a program at CSU that is a concentration of agriculture literacy, and this is exactly what it's designed for — to educate the people about agriculture on a more informal level." Ariana Brown is an agriculture education major at CSU and serves as a volunteer for the Ag Adventure program. She was part of a leadership team that participated in a class focusing on how to educate the public and navigate confrontations involving misconceptions surrounding food. So far, she says, she hasn't encountered any tough situations. In fact, Brown says her favorite part of being involved with Ag Adventure is the parents. "Interacting with [the parents] and seeing some of the things that the parents don't even know, it's kind of mind-blowing," she says. "I had a parent ask if all the cows in Colorado are clones. I had to have her repeat the question." Brown looks forward to teaching agriculture to urban kids as an ag teacher after college. As a farm girl, she has a passion for giving students in urban homes the opportunity to experience agriculture. Kids love it "They love it," Calderwood says, simply. It's a wonderland for the kids. They affectionately named the Colorado Beef Council's model bovine, Trailer, and love milking June, the Western Dairy Association's model milk cow. There's Food- ingo, like Bingo, that uses www.choosemyplate.gov to help engage kids in the process of choosing a healthy and balanced meal, while teaching them where their food comes from and why it's good for them. "The idea is to get kids to make the connection that, for example, ketchup is made from a tomato, which is a vegetable," Brown says. Helping students follow the trail from farm to fork gives them a better