While our Farm Bureau members are experts in the kind of agriculture they practice, they are often asked to give classroom presentations on ag jobs in general. To help them, we've developed an ag career game for middle and high school-aged children.
Presenters lead a brief introductory game to see where the students are at with their ag career knowledge. Then they briefly describe their operation and list 12 different ag careers they interact with as part of their work. Students are divided into small groups, and each group is assigned a part of a pizza: crust, sauce, cheese, pepperoni, green pepper, etc. They have to figure out 12 different ag careers that are involved with getting that product to market--and determine which class or interest might help a person connect to that career. There are resources from Michigan Farm Bureau and FFA to give students ideas. Then they play scattergories with those answers and the group with the most unique careers wins! Students close out the game by reflecting on their earlier answers to realize how much they've learned.
Our Promotion and Education Committee Chair Annie Link gave the presentation at a Lowell FFA meeting. It was a natural fit since they were having pizza that night! It was fun to watch the students debate about which ag careers to include on their handouts--even these experienced FFA kids learned about just how many different jobs are related to agriculture.
We are grateful to Michigan Farm Bureau's Connecting Communities Grant for their funding, which gave us the push to finally put this dream into action. Thank you, also to teacher Anna Reynolds for developing the game, and to our Board of Directors for stocking the game with some of their lists of ag careers they interact with.
The Kent County Ag Career Presentation is available in the Resources section of our website. Members can download and print it at any time, or they can request a kit that comes with all printouts and some farming-themed stickers to use as prizes.