A S.E.A.T. (Strategic Empowerment of Agriculture Teachers) at the Table with MANRRS

Commodities

Practices

The recent pandemic and other external factors have exposed an agricultural supply chain that is consolidated and efficient, but also susceptible to disruptions including drought and geopolitical tensions that threaten its resilience. In addition, despite the efficiency of modern production, far too many urban and rural communities in the US are in perpetual food deserts and/or are food insecure. These pressures indicate a critical need to innovate contemporary agricultural training methods to withstand these current issues and prepare for future challenges. Modern agricultural curricula will need to adapt to train students to innovate agriculture to be environmentally and socially appropriate for the participating communities. The current proposal “A S.E.A.T. (Strategic Empowerment of Agriculture Teachers) at the Table” will equip modern agriculture teachers, trainers and other professionals with the necessary curricula to recruit, train, and equip aspiring students and producers with the skills that they will need to feed the future.

The White House office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently convened representatives from each state to ideate and innovate the use of university campuses, community-based partnerships, and the Land Grant infrastructure to scale up and scale down transformational technologies to address climate, socioeconomic, and environmental justice. MANRRS and FFA are uniquely equipped with the intellectual capacity and organizational resources to create a state-of-the-art urban agriculture curriculum that will train teachers to empower students to address the intersection of these contemporary issues including urban sprawl, dwindling land and water availability, historic inequities, and the persistent effects of climate variability. This train the trainer approach will directly and positively impact students preparedness to address issues such as supply chain vulnerability and climate resiliency, as well as the food deserts and food insecurity that currently impact over 1 in 5 residents across the greater SE. The specific objectives of the proposal are as follows:

Objective 1: Develop a series of training modules that expose participants including agricultural teachers, counselors, advisors, and extension agents to the challenges and opportunities of contemporary, sustainable agriculture. This includes identifying emerging trends and technologies, ancillary industries that impact the sustainability and resiliency of modern agricultural production and natural resource conservation.

Objective 2: Convene a summit at the National MANRRS conference and the National FFA conference each year with Ag teachers, FFA advisors, 4H agents, Junior MANRRS advisors, and other frontline professionals to provide detailed workshops on effective strategies to recruit and inspire students in the fields that support sustainable agriculture.

Objective 3: Develop a living community of practice and a virtual forum to share additional curricula, workshops. Webinars, and best practices as we continue to build out the NextGen pipeline. This will provide durable content and resources that will outlast the seed funding in the current proposal.