Life on the Farm

By: Jill Dutton, jilldutton@miconews.com

An eighth-grade girl sits in the front row listening to a farmer talk about raising cattle and growing wheat for hay. Living in Glendale, Ca., near Los Angeles, she is unfamiliar with life on a farm, where her foods come from or how they are produced. Sincere but curious, she asks the farmer, “When you give a cow a shot does it get into its baby?”

Children living in the city rarely have the opportunity to learn about rural living. Through a program called Provider Pals, La Cygne farmers Chris and Paula Van Tyle had the opportunity to promote agriculture while educating students on a topic that to some is almost foreign.

A PASSION FOR AG

Working with children and educating the community about farming and ranching is the Van Tyles' passion. For years they have worked with various Farm Bureau committees to educate and advocate agriculture.

Chris and Paula own CPS Hay Exchange in La Cygne. Their farm is a hay and cow operation. They also are District 3 representatives for Farm Bureau. The Van Tyles have had a lot of involvement with youth programs. They serve on the Farm Bureau committee for Young Farmers and Ranchers (YF&R). Chris serves on the Board and also is the state chairman.

Their involvement with children includes organizing the YF&R conference each year. Last year, more than 300 youth attended the event. The Van Tyles also help facilitate the state-sponsored Farm Bureau contests. As if their committee duties weren't enough, they also volunteer their time at the Junior Livestock show, serving breakfasts.

A few years ago, already involved with multiple youth-oriented organizations, the Van Tyles met Bruce Vincent at a YF&R conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Vincent founded Provider Pals, a group that provides agricultural education to inner city school children. The Van Tyles' interest was immediate.

PROVIDER PALS

To educate and inform was Vincent's primary motivation in founding Provider Pals, a 501 c(3) nonprofit education corporation, in 1998. He started it to “encourage people to discuss their cultural realities, embrace their differences and celebrate their similarities. It uses a unique, yet practical approach to nature resource education along with a series of intra-national student exchanges to accomplish this task.” The mission of Provider Pals is to build a common-ground bridge of understanding and respect between urban youth, rural youth and their natural resource providers.

The organization reaches these goals through four program areas: classrooms around the nation “adopt” a provider from the farming, ranching, logging, mining, fishing or other resource providing profession; rural students experience urban culture by visiting inner-city classrooms; urban students experience rural culture by spending a week during the summer at Historic Raven Natural Resource Learning center in northwestern Montana; and the Provider Pals Virtual Village Web site resource.

So far, students, teachers and agricultural sponsors all have responded enthusiastically. The program provides opportunities and awareness that these youth might not otherwise have.

GOING TO THE INNER CITY

A miner, a logger, a fisherman, a rancher and a farmer left their hotel and drove to the inner city school in Glendale, Ca., early on June 9. Each held court in a classroom for eight hours with various classes filing in throughout the day to hear them talk.

Chris and Paula spent the day explaining what day-to-day life on a farm is like, including animals they raise, crops they grow and exactly where their food supply comes from.

The Van Tyles brought pictures of hay and wheat to share with the students. They explained how a combine works. They told the students the average person is three generations removed from the working farmer.

“These kids have very little experience or awareness of rural life and farming,” Chris said. “I explained that milk doesn't come from a grocery store and chicken doesn't come from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sometimes kids just don't understand the depth of the process of getting food to their tables.”

With at times a complete lack of understanding about the agricultural field, some of the questions the students asked were amusing. One child asked the Van Tyles, “Do you have television there?” Some students were shocked by the answer to the question, “Do you eat your own cows?”

Other students were simply curious, asking a variety of questions.

Since the teachers had prepped the students with vocabulary words and additional information on agriculture, the students were prepared with their questions. The Van Tyles experienced a whole spectrum of questioning but were delighted by the enthusiasm the children displayed. Two children nearly broke into a fist fight while arguing over who would be better suited to spend a week farming during summer break. Chris said, “I thought that was so cool. Two boys fighting over which one gets to come to Kansas to work on a farm.”

After returning home, the Van Tyles received a notebook filled with thank you letters from the kids.

“Thank you for coming all the way from Kansas to teach us about farming and cows,” eighth-grade student Tiara L. wrote. “The most interesting thing for me was you telling about alfalfa and how they're full of carbs. I wonder what it would be like working outside all day.”

The program provides the students with an opportunity to consider ways of living they might never experience.

The Provider Pals program encourages an ongoing interaction between the educators and students where each writes letters and sends pictures or videos.

A NEED FOR EDUCATION

Chris believes it is imperative that farmers advocate for themselves and their profession, so he spends a percentage of his time educating the community.

“As such a small minority, our voices are drowned out so easily,” he said. “Yet the perceptions against us grow constantly. The public hears about antibiotics in the milk and mad cow disease, and ends up with negative perceptions of farmers. We'd like to change that image by educating the public, and especially children, of rural life and the job of farming.”

Both of the Van Tyles plan to continue educating youth both locally and nationally. Sometime in the next year they will participate in another inner-city school program. They also would like to create more awareness locally. Chris has visited with his former high school to discuss the possibility of starting a similar program.

“Providing this type education allows the student to put a face with the name of a profession,” Paula said. “To realize that farmers are real people with families, not the bad guy. It allows us the opportunity to work with young people and show them what we do for a living.”

Then, ag workers like the Van Tyles can make a difference — one school at a time.