On Oct. 21, 44 fourth graders from McCollum Elementary came to visit the Southeast FFA program on a field trip to learn where their foods come from. 

The students were able to take part in different agriculture activities and explore how some foods are made. As an urban district, many students in Wichita Public Schools don’t often get to experience agriculture even though Kansas is known for its agricultural products. 

“They come here and they’re able to see the workshops where we’ve made butter out of cream and learn about how corn grows,” McCollum teacher Jennifer Pierce said. “They just get a good experience of that. And then as they get older, they might start thinking, ‘Wow, that agriculture program at Southeast was really fun. Maybe I want to check that out.’”

Agriculture teacher Joanna Farmers hosts this type of field trip to get kids really interested and involved in agriculture. Farmer hopes to encourage kids to build an interest in a career in agriculture and make them want to come back to Southeast to learn even more about the agriculture program. 

“We do it for a few reasons. First of all, we want kids to see how much agriculture is a part of their everyday life,” Farmer said. “We want them to be able to see where their food comes from. And we also want them to maybe develop an interest in it, so that when they’re older, they might want to go into that career, or even just come to Southeast High School and be involved in the program.”.

Southeast agriculture students and members of Future Farmers of America got to interact and lead the middle schoolers and bond with them about what the agriculture program does, including how to handle the farm animals.

This field trip really teaches the kids about agriculture from how to make certain types of food homemade to how to care and properly take care of plants and animals. Farmer hopes this experience encourages some kids to sign up and start taking agriculture classes when they move on to Southeast for high school.