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Students tackle ag issues in 4H Science of Agriculture Challenge

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Written by Jonathan Eisenthal

The fourth-annual 4H Science of Agriculture Challenge, most recently held at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in mid-June, is a competition featuring teams of junior high and high school students tasked with finding solutions for important issues facing agriculture today.

This year’s winners, three young women from Beltrami County, developed a curriculum for teaching students in grades three through five about the science and the value of GMO food crops.

“We can bridge the knowledge gap and help the next generation attain an understanding of science-based agricultural practices,” said Haley Mouser, a rising ninth grader on the Beltrami team who hopes to make her career in ag communications.

Mouser said the idea for their project came from their own experience speaking with both adults and kids about GMO foods and realizing the lack of general background consumers have on the topic. Thus, identifying the need for this curriculum.

For their first-place finish, each member of the team won a $1,000 dollar scholarship for use at any post-secondary or technical education institution.

A big part of the program is for each team to reach out to the corporate world, academia and other fields to find a professional to serve as their mentor as they seek out a problem and then develop a solution.

The three dove into their project with mentor Rachel Gray, who is the regional educator for the Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom program. Gray said she marveled at the group’s creativity to develop activities and animations that appeal to 9 to 11 year olds. The three 4Hers ultimately presented their curriculum to 11 classes, reaching a total of 225 students.

“I never realized how thorough and impressive and just overall exciting those girls would be. They took an idea, saying, hey, we need to educate our peers on GMO crops and they took it above and beyond what I ever expected,” Gray said.

Other top finishers in the challenge included a team based in Mower County who looked to raise consumer awareness of the qualities of lamb. The group created its own lamb jerky recipe as well as a beef jerky and held blind taste panels at grocery stores to prove to shoppers that they might like lamb as much as they like beef, if not more. A team in Le Sueur County tested different media for use in filters to lower nitrates that come from farm runoff and the release of community wastewater.

The overall purpose of the competition is to expose students to the depth and breadth of careers in agriculture, according to Dorothy McCargo Freeman, Minnesota’s 4H director.

“We want to help young people, in rural areas and urban areas alike, understand that there are high paying jobs in the agriculture field,” Freeman said.

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