The Agriculture-4-U vision is for all the school children in the UK to have a basic knowledge of where their food comes from and how it is produced from an early age.
Sample videos to achieve our vision....
Teachers:
Try our New Primary Curriculum Theme 'War on the Farm - Farmers v Bugs' now free....
Other Primary Themes also planned..... see list
Also just added new Careers Section
Why?
Agriculture is an integral part of all our lives, and its importance is only set to increase, as stressed in the recent Food Strategy Report by 2050 there may not be enough land to grow the food we need - see latest news opposite. We would like all the school children in the UK to have a basic knowledge of where their food comes from and how it is produced from an early age so that when they become the future decision makers they will have a deeper understanding of the dilemmas created when producing food and then be able to tackle the challenges which lay ahead.
Agriculture-4-U totally agrees with the closing statement of the recent BBC 'The Future of Food' series - "food is a precious resource which we can no longer take for granted"
How?
Agriculture-4-U is a video diary of UK Agriculture and what happens down on the farm - this video is a sample of what we aim to provide as the site grows.
What are the dilemmas?
'He who has bread may have troubles.
He who lacks it has only one.'
Old Byzantine proverb
In today’s world man faces both these problems at once.
With an ever increasing world population coupled with other demands on land, such as housing and now as a provider of energy in the form of biofuel and biomass, the food needed has to be provided from an ever smaller area.
This leads to more reliance on technology to achieve this which in turn produces its own problems; Agrochemicals, Fertilisers, GM Crops, Biodiversity, Conservation. Food Miles; Traceability of food, organic food, Amenity Land.
In order for future generations to address these issues they need to experience and understand farming by seeing what is happening down on the farm today. The aim of Agriculture-4-U is to achieve this by providing quality video which can be easily accessed and shown in all the classrooms in this country.
In an ideal world this experience would come via visits to farms, but the reality is that this is difficult and time consuming to arrange and rarely happens. Even when it does it can only ever be a snapshot of the life of a farm. Visiting a farm and seeing something exiting in 1 visit is possible but again rarely happens.
Agriculture-4-U provides the all year round action from down on the farm via videos. These videos are particularly useful for some specific pupil groups for several reasons:
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No smell, no tramping around in the mud (and worse), no extra staff, no weather restrictions – bringing up-close farming right into the classroom.
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School trips are important, but can be a logistical nightmare for a range of reasons, including health and safety considerations and form-filling, and staffing requirements
See what we can do for Agriculture....
See what we can do for Education...
Some Videos just completed....
Dairy - an introduction
Cows being milked....
Lambing
Lambing....
Coming soon.....
Growing Peppers
Shearing sheep
To find out when...
Contact Agriculture-4-U to register and then receive an e-mail when we add new materials - Contact Now
What Agriculture-4-U wants to do for UK Agriculture.
New Holland TX68
works into the night cutting winter wheat
As a farmer of many years and more recently a Science and ICT (computers) teacher I get so annoyed when I see 'misinformation' told about Agriculture in the UK. This is our attempt to correct these 'errors' - by showing UK Agriculture as it is and provide teachers with farming based resources to teach Science, Design & Technology, Geography
What Agriculture-4-U wants to do for UK Education.
Some Science
Agriculture-4-U will provide a stock of video resources of UK Agriculture which give a fair and true reflection of how UK Agriculture is today. Some of the information I saw in textbooks was either out of date or biased against mainstream UK Agricultural practice (E.g. using long banned pesticides as an example of how farmers use pesticides which can accumulate in food chains and suggesting that farmers spray chemicals haphazardly and without a thought for the environment)
These videos will show what farmers are doing now on their farms and I will provide a commentary of why they are doing this and then it is up to individuals either teachers or students to form their own opinions.
Register with Agriculture-4-U to receive an e-mail when we add new materials - Register Now
Agriculture-4-U provides teaching resources, especially videos, from UK Agriculture to help you teach Key Stage 1,2,3, 4 and 5 in subjects such as Geography, Science, ICT, Design and Technology