Elmer Eckart

As a San Franciscan, born and raised, I feel the outdoors, nature and farming must be taught to all children, but particularly those that live in large urban areas. As a kid I had a backyard garden where I grew vegetables. I also remember my dad taking the family to Sonoma County to select our Thanksgiving turkey and see a small farm with all its animals; this was a much-anticipated yearly event.

In the mid to late 1960s I was very involved in environmental education in California and conducted a resident Outdoor School camping program for 15 years for my school in San Francisco. This led to my teaching of agriculture education, and my collaboration with the California Farm Bureau working on agriculture-themed curriculum projects.

I suppose you can say I've been a friend to CFAITC since the beginning—30 years ago, when the California Farm Bureau was asked by San Francisco Schools to hold Farm Days in the City.

I recall one of our earliest (and bravest!) endeavors involved a four-day overnight immersion program with my fourth and fifth grade students from San Francisco. In those days, we were able to arrange for the students to live with farm families in Fresno and Madera counties to learn about farms and farm production. A year or two after this trip, I had a minority student return to visit my school and he was visually very upset when he came to my class. He was holding a section from the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle that talked about many farmers in Central Valley losing their land because of mortgage problems. He said this can't happen and explained that one of the grape farmers that had lost land was his host family. This really made an impact! And of course I was able to use this as a real life lesson for the class.

My current involvement is mostly working with Project Food, Land & People materials as the California coordinator of FLP. I attend annual CFAITC conferences and an occasional National AITC conference, participate in the Agriculture Literacy Coalition Meetings, evaluate materials for CFAITC and participate or furnish materials for meetings in the greater Bay Area. I also substitute in my former school, Grattan Elementary about once a week and always talk about agriculture or teach a lesson about agriculture. Grattan still includes ag education in its site plan, including a "Farm Week." Every student in grades 3-5 has lessons with me, and uses the Foundation's What's Growin' On? student newspaper.

In California, we will constantly have problems revolving around water and land use and how these issues affect the agriculture industry. All people, particularly students, need to be aware of where food and fiber come from as our students today will be voters in the future and they need to make informed decisions.

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