Agriculture plays a critical role in today’s society, as without it there would be no food for us to eat, yet some people don’t even know where a hamburger comes from. This is one of the many reasons Yutan High School needs more education programs related to agriculture. 

While many schools around Yutan have full-on FFA programs, Yutan only has one class related to agriculture: Intro to Ag. While this is an improvement from the previous years when no ag classes were offered, many students in Yutan would benefit from a more advanced program.

One of the benefits of agricultural classes is that students are able to learn about how their food comes from the farm to the table. 

“I think it’s important that people know where their food comes from and how it gets made, how it’s delivered…from your field to your table,” said skills and technical science instructor Matt Wachter.

While agriculture may seem like an “old” business, it is so important to survival today. If agriculture were to disappear, clothing, food and other items essential to survival would be gone.

“Ag isn’t just the good old days of plowing the field and being the old farmer. Ag is so broad these days that you can not even have a pair of jeans in your closet and still be involved,” said sophomore Cooper Leather, who drives to nearby Mead High School to take FFA every day during first period.

People can be connected to agriculture in many ways, such as in fields like science, business or transportation, and still play a part in agriculture. While most students won’t be in a career like farming or ranching, many will still somehow be involved.

Leather, who notes that quite a few of his classmates in FFA aren’t involved in agriculture outside of school at all, said, “They are still in it, and they still want to learn about it because it’s something new, and it’s something that they might pursue in the future, even though they’re not offered that at home.”

Students could use this information in the future no matter what they do. They could use information from an FFA or ag class for something as simple as producing nutritious plants in a garden to something as specialized as using the correct chemicals for a bean field. 

“You can start to bring FFA into the mix… a more structured program or more classes relating to ag, you know, apart from the Intro to Ag class,” said Wachter, who believes that additional classes would be a significant change. “We’re wanting to create a well-rounded student getting ready for the world.”

Although the new Intro to Ag class was a great addition to Yutan, students would do nothing but profit from even more agricultural classes in the school.