Week Nine with Extension by Heather Knauss

 Me leading part of the lesson Joy and I taught at the Westfield Mall Library.

This week I had the opportunity to teach a 4-H Lesson on carbon emissions with Joy, the 4-H Extension Program Assistant. It was the same lesson that I helped to teach with Gretchen the week before. It was wonderful to get an experience helping to teach, learning what all goes into that, and how much effort goes into preparing for something like that. Having the opportunity to teach in two different settings and to three different sets of children was wonderful and really opened my eyes to how some teaching methods may work for some children but will not have the same effects on others. The children in the two classes that Gretchen and I taught were all engaging with the lesson, the group that I taught with Joy were more reserved however so it was harder to tell whether they were retaining the information. Even though I had my reservations about getting up in front of a bunch of children and teaching, this experience helped me to realize that with the right amount of preparation it can be a wonderful experience and if we want the future of agriculture and the world to get better, starting with educating younger generations is a good idea. In preparing for this as well I have learned more about my own carbon footprint and I have realized that I can do better in my own life.

Steve Darcy said, the future generation of Agriculture Professionals are challenged with promoting an agriculture that feeds a projected 9 billion people while protecting and regenerating our natural resources. One of the first ways to do this is by lowering our carbon emissions because the more carbon we have in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped inside our earth, and the more heat that gets trapped inside our earth the more extreme weather and losses we will have. Unfortunately people on an individual level can only do so much, a lot of carbon emissions are produced on an industrial level, but there are still things that we can do on an individual and agricultural level to lower emissions. One of the ways farmers can lower carbon emissions is to sell their products locally to reduce transportation. Other ways we as farmers can protect our natural resources is by taking better care of our soils. A lot of soils are depleting very fast and there are ways we can fix that, for example peat moss is becoming an endangered type of soil and I believe that slowing down the mining on it can help to preserve that natural resource. Both of these things I have mentioned are important, however they only fall on deaf ears if there is no outreach. The people in the positions to understand this information need to spread awareness, that should be the first goal.

Interns at the Commodity Classic.

As the week rounded out for me, Dave, Brian and I visited the Commodity Classic. The rest of the interns were there as well to inform people about our UME internships. Overall it was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot about the political side of agriculture.