Candid Conversation presents a discussion about the topical issues related to Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) priorities, the agricultural industry, and rural communities, in a question-and-answer format. In this special edition, Lt. Governor Jacqueline Coleman and Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell discuss a new initiative that would include agriculture education at the elementary school level. The following is an excerpt taken from a recent KFB News podcast.

KFB: Would you tell us about this new collaboration and how it began?

Lt. Governor Coleman: From my perspective as the Lieutenant Governor, we've really been working on the idea of improving, expanding, and creating space for more ag education and thinking through how we can do that. We know that the number of farmers we have in Kentucky is going down and my question was how we can expand and broaden that base of people who have access to information and education that might lead them into this field.

As someone who grew up in a small town on a farm, it was a foreign concept to me that some students had never experienced the farm, and something that was not a part of their life. So, we wanted to think about ways we might be able to reach students and actually bring them into the fold. That's really been our mission, thinking through how we can make this possible.

There are just so many things that you can weave into this that would also be a big help to our teachers and our education system in creating more hands-on activities and more real-life experiences.

Commissioner Shell: Education is the great equalizer no matter where you come from, and it helps bring people to a level where they can succeed and gives them an opportunity. What we're trying to build here is beyond structural education, to being lifelong learners, and trying to set these students up for success. We've gone beyond not knowing where your food comes from to not even being able to recognize what these animals are.

When the Lt. Governor reached out sometime in early January to me and wanted to have a meeting, I tried to come up with actionable items of ways that we could work together. I had three main things that I wanted to talk to her about education and agriculture. The first one was on our mobile science activity centers of how to improve those and make those better. The second thing was how we better collaborate with the Department of Education through her office in order to help get more education grants for ag education through the department, particularly around sensory issues and kids that have special needs for those mobile science activity centers. And the last thing was something that she had been working on, that I didn't know about, was around ag education and trying to get more of that into elementary schools.

So, we set up a meeting with Education Commissioner Robbie Fletcher and it went great, and everyone bought into the idea.

KFB: What is the importance of ag education, not only for the students but the teachers, as well?

Lt. Governor Coleman: When I think about elementary kids, the earlier you get students interested in something and aware of their surroundings, the better it's going to be in the long run. But I also think about how much this will support our elementary schools from a curriculum standpoint. They're all looking at project-based learning and how to infuse some cross-curricular topics together to knock out a bunch of standards and to be able to cover a lot of ground. Ag education is an amazing way to do that.

We may have some elementary school teachers who were in FFA or who went through agriculture programs, but they're not certified to teach ag education the way that our high school teachers are. So being able to help them with ideas, with ways that they can innovate by providing resources and some guidelines and things like that, teachers will love that. They're always looking for new ideas and ways to do things better, and by helping elementary school teachers who may not have a background in ag education think about their own subject matter differently, now their students are going to think about it differently too. This is not another requirement. This is not another mandate. This is an opportunity. This is where people can pick and choose. And really, we're helping to provide these resources and opportunities so that teachers can make it what they want it to be.

Commissioner Shell: We visited a school recently (and visited with a) teacher who had put together her own materials and she created a lesson plan for herself. She didn't have help from anyone. She was teaching about lettuce. The class made sweet potato quesadillas and salsa from things that they had grown in their garden at the school, and she had created this whole content herself and was working through that.

What we want to do is to help provide those resources where, instead of her having to take an entire weekend away from her family, figuring out how to put this together, she can go to a website, or go online, and be able to get that content to use in the school to where it's laid out in a very professional way, the way that the rest of their curriculum would be.

KFB: Are you hoping that this initiative plants an idea for the students to keep as they grow whether they want to be on the farm or not?

Lt. Governor Coleman:  Yes. When I taught high school, I taught government and would partner with the biology teachers, and ag science teachers, where we came up with a project, and then in my class we would work on ag policy. And we figured out how to bring it to life. There's just so much crossover, you don't have to live on a 200-acre farm to be a farmer and to understand just the basics of nutrition and being a good tenant of the earth. All of those skills are areas our students will benefit from, whether they go into something that might lead them directly into agriculture or not.

It’s about broadening that base and opening this door so that our students understand where their food comes from, and how all of these things work so If they choose to go into an ag field, that's great because they probably wouldn't have had access to that knowledge beforehand.

And if they don't, just understanding and having that realization about how it all comes together, I don't think there's a better subject for our students to be able to do that with than in agriculture education.

Commissioner Shell: Absolutely. The thing that we need to help people realize is that you don't have to be a farmer to be in agriculture. It's not just plows, cows, and sows. There are so many opportunities in agriculture beyond what it used to be and everything that you do. There's not a degree that I can think of that you can go to in college and not utilize that for agriculture. We need ag attorneys, we need ag doctors, we need rural healthcare providers that specialize to help our farmers out. We need ag marketers, we need ag communicators, we need ag newscasters, we need ag everything.

What we are hopeful for is to help students realize, as they go through the process, K-5 and then beyond, that everything has to do with agriculture and there's a place for you and you are needed in agriculture.

KFB: We're very fortunate to live in a state where agriculture is a very bipartisan subject, and that really has to be a great advantage to you as we begin this initiative, and we get further into it knowing that you've got support from both sides of the aisle for this.

Lt. Governor Coleman: When it comes to both agriculture and education, those are and should be, and should remain nonpartisan issues, not even bipartisan, nonpartisan. I think about the opportunity that this provides us to come to the table and find areas where we agree and build relationships in places where there may not have been. Which may allow us to come together to work on something else down the road. And it is one of those opportunities that opens the door for us as adults working in state government to be able to be an example.

I think a lot of folks look at government and politics and they see it as maybe a requirement to pick winners and losers, and that should never be what we're doing. We should all be looking at yes and answers and coming together to figure out how to solve problems. And when it comes to agriculture, Kentucky's economy absolutely depends upon it. And I've always said the future of Kentucky's economy is in our classrooms today. So what better crossroad for us to come together on than something like this.

Commissioner Shell: I think this is what people expect out of government. Elections are one thing, you have to pick sides, but when the elections are over, this is when you come together and do the work on behalf of the people. You can have disagreements on certain policies that you're passionate about, but there are issues that you need to come together on, and education and agriculture like the Lieutenant Governor said, are exactly two of the issues. And I'm very, very grateful for how gracious she has been in this process. I can’t see how this initiative would fail at this point. It's going to happen and it's going to be something special that I think we're going to see longevity for the future.