Hello, my name is Nicholas Ward, and today I will explain why all kids should learn about agriculture. Kids should learn about agriculture for three reasons: Life lessons, benefits, and skills. These reasons will support my claim and explain why. By learning about agriculture, kids will make better food choices, learn smarter spending and saving habits, and become better future citizens.
To start with, we have life lessons. Life lessons teach you what to do in life so you can improve. Believe it or not, agriculture does actually teach life lessons. The first life lessons would be responsibility. Responsibility is a key part of holding a job or being successful in school. Agriculture teaches us that we are responsible for our choices, such as what we eat, how we spend our money, and completing our homework so that we graduate. Another life lesson agriculture teaches is time management. Agriculture teaches time management by making you learn to plan your day, how to set priorities, and still keep good grades. This is how we manage schoolwork, homework, other clubs, and our show animals. For example, just because you have another club or activity, doesn’t mean your animal project in agriculture can skip a day of feed or clean water. A third life lesson would be leadership. Agriculture teaches leadership by having you up front, talking, and proposing new ideas. Kids in agriculture classes or clubs can get leadership skills by serving as an officer, going to conferences, and competing in events like public speaking. These skills will be very valuable in any job a person gets after school.
My second reason why every student should learn about agriculture is the benefits. Agriculture gets you ahead in school, and in life, it gets you scholarships. You can earn money and even go to colleges such as UF. How can you earn money? By raising and selling livestock projects, such as a steer at the fair. It gives you high school credits so you can graduate through certification tests like AEST. Also, learning about agriculture provides students with lots of academic, personal, and social benefits that go beyond the farm. The plant classes teach biology, which you will use in other classes. By learning agricultural topics, students gain a deeper understanding of where their food comes from, which controls food awareness and encourages healthier nutritional choices. When did you read a food label last? Do you know what all of the parts mean? There’s a lot of bad information about food all over YouTube and TikTok. But in agriculture classes, students learn about what is really in their food and how to make the best food choices. Then classes serve as a laboratory, allowing learners to apply scientific and math-like concepts to real-world challenges using the scientific method to test what we see. Students learn to answer questions for themselves. I have even learned to problem-solve without help. How? Figuring out how to catch loose chickens or my cows. Problem-solving is a benefit because not everyone can problem-solve without help or Google, but I have learned in agriculture classes, and I think other kids should too.
My third reason why every kid should learn about agriculture is the skills. Teaching agriculture in every class helps students with lots of practical and hands-on skills that are highly usable in any career. Through hands-on activities like managing school gardens or weather cycles, students develop thinking skills and problem-solving abilities as they navigate challenges like weather changes and pest control. Students also get to apply subjects taught in other classes, like percentages in fertilizer, fractions when measuring, reading technical papers and writing essays like this. Even if you don’t want to have a career in agriculture, you can use the skills you learn in all careers, such as record keeping, safety, and animal health. Skills learned in an agriculture class help all students have good careers and become productive citizens of our country.
My conclusion is that kids should learn about agriculture because of life lessons, benefits, and skills. These reasons all contribute to why people should learn about agriculture. It helps so much in the future. By taking agriculture classes, students learn about their community, become leaders, find careers, and keep records showing their projects. Students get to find out about how their chicken nuggets become nuggets, why a fresh carrot is healthier than a frozen one, and learn how to measure their future projects. Agriculture is more than just cows and fields. It is kids becoming good individuals who will be successful, no matter what they do.
