By Dick Hagen
So you question if younger folks have talent.
It took Kelly Kohler, 10th grade student in the Redwood Valley FFA Chapter in Redwood Falls, all of about 30 minutes to write a 450-word essay about the importance of agriculture in America.
On March 7, at a National Ag Day “Celebration of Agriculture” dinner in Washington, D.C., this 16-year-old was declared the national winner.
Using the theme “Agriculture-Every Day in Every Way,” the Agriculture Council of America called upon students in grades seven through 12 nationwide to submit original essays about the multiple touch points of agriculture in their daily lives.
A major resource “touch point” for Kohler was her grandmother who shared early experiences of being raised on a farm. Plus she drew upon her own experiences on her parents’ Redwood County farm, internet information about American agriculture and observations about her fellow high school classmates.
Kohler first had to be a state winner before being eligible for the national competition. Her ag education instructor, Jeremy Daberkow, encouraged her to “give it a try” after searching the FFA internet website and finding the essay application form.
Kohler’s writing skills were already apparent to Daberkow and her fellow students, so write she did.
“My idea was to write about the fact that in an urban population people don’t realize that agriculture is around them every day in many different ways,” Kohler said.
“Go into the city and see a person eating a burger, or any fast-food sandwich. That person very likely has zero knowledge about where either the hamburger or the bun came from. Even the clothes they wear can be from farm crop fibers. And if you asked them to carefully check the ingredients in a box of cereal, you would have to point out that most of those items came from the farm. There is just a tremendous disconnect between farm and non-farm people about where American food comes from.”
Note these excerpts from her essay: “In large cities where the view of farm fields is hidden by looming skyscrapers, agriculture is practically a foreign concept. Thousands of people from the metropolitan area eat, touch, drink and wear agriculture and for the most part are oblivious to the effect agriculture has on their lives.
“The urban dweller has no idea that the leather briefcase in hand, the burger for lunch, even the shirt on his back are products of the agriculture industry. The leather and beef came from a cow; the fibers in the shirt came from a plant that grew on a farmer’s property.
“The food that farmers produce goes to nourish the masses that largely overlook their entire existence. Have you ever gone to a grocery store where there was no food on the shelves?”
The restarting of an agricultural education program (after a 24-year absence) in the Redwood Valley Public School has created a new interest in agriculture among both girls and boys, and both farm and non-farm students. “It’s amazing to me how many kids are wanting to learn about ag now that we have a program in place,” Kohler said.
Her ambitions? Perhaps because there already are two nurses in the Kohler family, she too wants to get a degree in nursing and return to her hometown community, perhaps seeking work in the Redwood Falls Area Hospital. She commented that with a nursing degree you always have a job opportunity.
Linda Tank, vice president for CHS Inc., which sponsored the Ag Day essay competition, said “Kohler’s essay highlighted the many areas of agriculture that people encounter on a day-to-day basis without realizing that American agriculture is what makes it all possible.”
This was the 36th anniversary of National Ag Day. The goal of the ACA is to help consumers understand how food and fiber products are produced and the safety, abundance and affordability of these products.
