In the dynamic worlds of agriculture and culinary arts, it’s important for students to learn common farm-to-fork issues. Whether your students are interested in agriculture or culinary careers or gardening and cooking at home, they can benefit from understanding how food goes from a seed in a field to their dinner plate. Read on to learn about our Farm to Fork Lab Kit, a unique kit that makes teaching these farm-to-fork concepts easy.
Identify Common Field Insects With Oversized Models
The Farm to Fork Lab Kit comes with a Field Insects Kit that features eight models of adult field insects. Students can try identifying the full-color insect models in small groups and create a brief oral presentation on them. Afterward, they can learn about each insect in-depth through the included presentation slides. Additionally, you can also use the insects to teach students how to identify adult versus larva insects.
Explain Food Contamination With Farm-to-Fork Lab Supplies
The kit includes Petri dishes, agar powder, and cotton swabs. You can use these items to facilitate a lab activity in which students identify environments for food contamination. Students can swab areas where food may be stored and rub the swab over the surface of the agar. Leave the Petri dishes in a warm, dark area and see what bacteria grows!
Use Whiteboard To Engage Students in Review and Guessing Games
This unique kit comes with five whiteboards, markers, and microfiber cloths. Students can use these items for farm-to-fork review activities and guessing games. For example, give students a fruit or vegetable and have them write the temperature they think the item should be stored in on their boards before going over correct answers as a class.
Develop Soft Skills With Farm-to-Fork Scenario Cards
Use the included Shipping, Packaging, and Pricing and Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping Scenario Cards to develop students’ soft skills, like critical thinking and problem solving. The Shipping, Packaging, and Pricing scenario cards provide students with an ethical dilemma to ponder. The Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping cards challenge students to create meal plans around specific budgets and dietary restrictions.
Example Shipping, Pricing, and Packaging Scenario: A food distributor receives an order for a large quantity of fresh produce from a distant country. However, due to the urgency of the request, they are faced with the dilemma of choosing between air freight, which has a higher carbon footprint, or sea freight, which takes longer and may compromise the quality and freshness of the food.
Introduce These Concepts With Ready-to-Use Curriculum
The Farm to Fork Lab Kit comes with downloadable, standards-based curriculum with five lessons. The lesson topics span from production of goods and processing agricultural products to shipping product to local retail stores and food ending up on your plate. Also, the entire curriculum features seven hours of content, but you can pick and choose lessons and activities as needed.
View this kit’s curriculum overview here.
Additional Resources:
- Learn more about teaching farm-to-fork concepts in your CTE program by watching our webinar, Teaching Farm-to-Fork Concepts in Your CTE Program
- Discover more plant science and culinary resources you can implement in your program on our hydroponics and culinary implementation pages
- Explore more culinary and plant science learning aids
