Bees do so much more than make that sweet goop that goes so well with tea and crumpets. They also pollinate apples, berries, melons and about a hundred other crops that make our meals healthier more delicious, and more colorful.
We owe a lot to our honey bees. In fact, they pollinate approximately $15 billion worth of produce in the country each year — or about a quarter of the food we consume.
But, as you might know, honey bee populations around the world are dipping at devastating rates. And if these worrying trends continue, this is what your grocery store would look like: Half-empty.
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That’s why Whole Foods Market is trying to get us — and their youngest consumers — buzzed about bees in their Share the Buzz awareness campaign.
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The grocery chain also announced a new initiative, the Honey Bee Grant Program, to educate youngsters about the importance of the honey bee.
In a recent announcement, the Whole Kids Foundation said they will award approximately 50 hive grants to school gardens across the country in order to teach kids how to raise bees and tend hives. The added bonus? As kids learn how to take care of their fuzzy friends, they also learn lessons on pollination, agriculture, ecology, and nutrition.
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“You can’t learn about growing fruits and vegetables without learning about bees,” said Jeff Miller, a beekeeper and educator at the non-profit DC Honeybees in Washington, D.C., in the announcement. “Bees are as important to the process as sun and water.”
As the foundation notes, any parent who is worried about exposing their kids to stinging insects should note that bees are naturally docile and, that with proper supervision, kids and bees can peacefully coexist.
Saving the bees and educating children at the same time — sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
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Tag: Agriculture
From Farm to Cafeteria Table: These Students Are Growing Their Own Food
If you surveyed teens as to what their favorite food is, chances are, the hamburger would be in the top three. But while many young people can’t get enough of the patty sandwiched between two buns (possibly slathered in special sauce?), they probably don’t give any thought to how those ingredients are grown and raised.
A unique program in the small town of Hagerstown, Indiana (population 1,769) is changing that, while at the same time, saving the district money. As the New York Times reports, students at the local junior-senior high school are enrolled in a very hands-on agricultural science class that teaches them how to raise their own livestock and crops. Eventually, these items will be harvested and processed and be served in the school’s very own cafeteria.
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As the Times notes, the classes are combating two big problems in the community: A decline of local farmers, as well as decreased school funding and budget cuts in the wake of the Great Recession. Turns out, the pork, beef, chicken, fruits and vegetables being grown right on the campus farm is expected to save the school a lot of money — at least $2,000 annually in cafeteria costs. Additionally, the Times reports that that the campus-raised beef is replacing 5,000 pounds of hamburger patties that the district was purchasing at $3.30 per pound.
Significantly, in a town where one of the two listed local groceries is a place called Gas America, this program is encouraging healthier diets, local agriculture, and sustainable farming practices. Garrett Blevins, a junior at the school, told the Times he’s now considering a career in agriculture thanks to the program. “There are kids out there who would never experience agriculture until they join these programs,” he said. “Once they do, it will open up a whole new world.”
This Innovative Business Keeps Open Land and Western Traditions Alive
Rent grassland, save the cowboys.
That’s the aim of a new Colorado program creatively circumventing the staggeringly high price of real estate to stave off development and keep a traditional lifestyle alive — and creating a foodie favorite so in demand that Whole Foods can’t keep the shelves stocked.
The solution started, as solutions often do, with a problem. Tai Jacober saw his family’s land divided and sold after his grandfather died. And he and his brothers couldn’t afford to buy a ranch.
“You can’t buy ag land in Colorado,” Jacober, a third-generation rancher, told Kelly Bastone of 5280. The cost of maintaining undeveloped pasturelands has become too high for many ranching families in Colorado. What used to be open acreage now holds second homes and resorts.
Since he couldn’t buy, Jacober decided to rent.
Crystal River Meats of Carbondale, Colo., leases pasture land on a large scale. It’s a win-win — Jacober and ranchers like him get to keep their livelihood, while landowners get to support traditional ranching culture and snag agricultural tax credits without having to run cattle themselves.
Farmers and ranchers have leased land before, but Crystal River Meats does it wholesale, renting 250,000 acres dotted throughout various communities. And their local, humanely-produced beef flies off the Whole Foods shelves.
Jacober has big dreams for his rental business, dreams that stretch far beyond Carbondale’s cows. He wants Crystal River Meats to serve as a blueprint for other communities across the state to preserve that Western ideal of open land and cattlemen, especially near the state’s popular ski towns.
“There’s a cultural benefit to having a viable ag operation that preserves the rural look — and the cowboys that come with that,” Jacober says.
Thanks to projects like Jacober’s, the open vistas of the West might just have a chance.
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Teach Her to Raise a Goat, And She Just Might End Up a Scientist
If you want your daughter to study science or engineering in college, maybe you should start by enrolling her in an organization that can teach her how to raise a prize pig, put together a photography portfolio, or sew a quilt. Membership in 4-H, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture-sponsored organization for kids and teenagers (a staple at county fairs), has been shown to increase girls’ participation in science and technology activities. A Tufts University study found that 10th grade girls in 4-H are two times more likely to take part in science programs, and 12th grade girls in 4-H are three times more likely to do so. Now 4-H has joined the Million Women Mentors initiative that aims to match a million mentors with specialties in science, technology, engineering and math to girls across the country. Women make up 48 percent of the workforce, but only 24 percent of them hold jobs in STEM fields, numbers that 4-H aims to improve with this program, along with continuing to help kids raise some prize-winning goats.
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How a Town’s Lettuce Fields Are Spurring a Tech Boom
The city of Salinas is located just an hour south of Silicon Valley, but technologically speaking, it’s eons away. The farm town, known for growing some of the best lettuce in the nation, doesn’t have adequate technology to produce and harvest it efficiently. So, in an effort to bring its agriculture industry into the modern age, this midsized city’s officials are doing something unprecedented. They’ve hired a venture capital firm — and invested nearly $300,000 of the city’s own money — to try to fund a startup incubator and attract talent from Silicon Valley. The goal is to foster new agricultural technologies that will modernize the city’s farms, and in turn create jobs and spur an economic revival. “We’re actually setting up a new business model, actually, for … most local governments, for most cities,” Ray Corpuz, Salinas’ city manager, told NPR. “None of them, that I know, in the state of California are doing this.” Other city managers think the venture capital fund is risky move, he said, but hey, there’s potentially a lot of green in the lettuce industry.
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