Mark Linder

CFBF Agricultural Education/California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, 1980-1998

Thirty six years ago, in a decade when urban dwellers didn't yet read signs in grocery stores about the farmers who grew their produce, my wife, Mary, and I moved to California to fulfill our dream. It was a dream shared by thousands of rural Americans since our country was first settled: to venture from farm and field to city streets and lights. When I arrived at the California Farm Bureau's headquarters, then in Berkeley, Mary and I found a place for everything in our new hometown, that beautiful City by the Bay. Everything, but what matters most to sustaining human life. Cows. Corn. Chickens. Soil. While millions of urban dwellers found an endless array of food—much of it grown right in the heart of California—in their stores, there was little talk of where that food came from, how it was grown, and who cultivated those grass green avocados and bright red strawberries from seed to harvest. Though I grew up on an all American farm, our daughters and their classmates would eat their school lunches every day on a concrete schoolyard, not realizing how the milk they drank came from a cow out there in Sonoma, how those almonds they munched on came to be harvested just outside of Modesto or how those artichokes they treasured made their way to San Francisco from Monterey.

In 1980, Dr. Armand Magid with the San Francisco Unified School District asked the Farm Bureau for assistance in organizing a tour of agriculture for the school district's K-12 teachers. The sun up to sun down Saturday field trip we coordinated was so well received that the SFUSD established a special office in their curriculum department for me and we were off and running in creating a new form of agricultural education. This ground-breaking program would eventually span all grade levels from Kindergarten through the university level. Together, with a hard-working staff, many dedicated volunteers and numerous financial supporters, along with our close friends in the San Francisco Unified School District and other school districts up and down the state, the California Farm Bureau created the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom in 1986, an educationally based foundation with many innovative programs that served as a role model across the USA. We taught children of all grade levels where their food and fiber comes from so that urban school kids—like their country cousins in 4-H and FFA—could enjoy that thrill of brown cows towering above them in their schoolyards, and learn that everything they eat and most of the clothes they wear, comes from a farm or ranch somewhere.

The importance of agriculture in our daily lives, coupled with the importance of knowing the source of our food and fiber spurred the program on across California and soon covered all fifty states within a few short years. In San Francisco and New York, Glendale and Chicago, Fresno and Atlanta, teachers spent weekends on family farms learning lesson plans about agriculture, while kids and parents participated in Farm Day programs in school yards. As I reflect on the history and success of AITC in California, it certainly has been an honor and a privilege to have served as the founding president. My life is forever enriched by the friendships and bonds formed and the dedication demonstrated by all those associated with our vision as we built the program together. As the mission of the Foundation, with renewed vigor on this 25th anniversary, carries into the future, I am truly grateful for the lifelong memories and I salute each and every dedicated staff member, donor and volunteer for their contributions of time, money and creative ideas over the years.

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