Faribault Chamber of Commerce Agri-Business Committee

There was another full conference room at the Faribault Chamber of Commerce Agri-Business Committee meeting today. It is exciting to have new members ready to step up and help with current activities and ideas about how to improve them. We are busy now with our third-grade classroom visits. We go into the classes with samples of corn, soybeans, and also pictures of how we grow and harvest them right outside of Faribault. We also have products from the grocery store that the students will recognize and relate them back to corn and soybeans.

In April we bus all the students out to visit a farm with livestock. For a number of years we have received a Cargill grant to help pay for the buses. I always ask how many of the students in each class have ever been on a farm. In a class of 20 or 25 students, many times only three or four have been on a farm! Faribault is not exactly a major metropolitan area, but still our students are far removed from how their food is produced. So many students know nothing about farming and how their food is produced. It sometimes seems like why try, we cannot make a difference anyway. On the other hand, every year there are a few hundred students who can say they met a farmer and visited a farm!