What we call "agricultural literacy" is at a depressingly low point, according to a scholarly report in the Journal of Agricultural Education. One grade-school respondent, for example, told researchers that "My mommy told me bread comes from an animal. I don't know which animal."
In a front-page story, The Washington Post reports today that a high percentage of Americans do not have the most rudimentary understanding of food or agriculture. "Today, many Americans only experience food as an industrial product that doesn't look much like the original animal or plant," the Post says.
The story reports on an online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.
A few examples:
- 16 million people think chocolate milk comes from brown cows
- 40% of California 4th-graders (5th and 6th graders, too) didn't know that hamburger comes from cows
- Orange juice is the nation's most popular "fruit"
- French fries and potato chips are the nation's most popular "vegetables"
There's actually a non-profit, FoodCorps, with a mission to bring more agricultural and nutrition education into elementary schools. But it may be a losing battle, according to Cecily Upton, FoodCorps co-founder. "Right now, we're conditioned to think that if you need food, you go to the store. Nothing in our educational framework teaches kids where food comes from before that point."
It wasn't that the kids didn't know, apparently; it's that they couldn't explain it in academic terms. "All informants recalled the names of common foods in raw form and most knew foods were grown on farms or in gardens," the researchers concluded. "They did not, however, possess schema necessary to articulate an understanding of post-production activities nor the agricultural crop origin of common foods."
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