Starting this fall, a new mobile classroom will bring students around Michigan an agricultural education.
The Food, Agriculture and Resources in Motion or FARM mobile science lab is making its way to elementary schools around the state.
Coordinators say under-served urban areas will be high priority destinations.
Debra Schmucker is with the Michigan Farm Bureau. She says the program teaches students about the importance of agriculture, and hopefully, gets them thinking about farm related careers.
“Integrating that understanding into kids at a younger age helps them be able to make assumptions and think earlier on about what opportunities there could be from a career aspect the earlier that you start implementing that education. .”
Schmucker says schools benefit from the program as much as the students do.
“Some of the positive feedback that we’ve had, we’re able to bring a field trip to them. They have the opportunity to learn and then go right back into their normal curriculum as well without having the interruptions and the expense of a field trip.”
Schmucker says the program meets school’s curriculum standards.
Organizers are scheduling visits with schools now for the 2017-2018 school year.