It's sad but true ... Many children-and teachers-have never visited a farm. Their knowledge of where their food and fiber comes from is limited.

Because agriculture plays such an important but little known role in our lives, the Contra Costa Farm Bureau in conjunction with the California Farm Bureau and the California Ag in the Classroom Foundation, works with students and teachers in the local area to inform them about the importance of agriculture. Through the Farm Bureau's Ag Education activities, learning about agriculture can be FUN.

Farm Bureau's Activities include:

• Farm Days
• Field Trips to the County
• Summer Ag Classes for Teachers (Through Hayward State)
• Farmers in the Classroom
• Lesson Plans, Visual Aids, Resource Guide

The goal of Ag in the Classroom is to help students acquire enough knowledge to function effectively as agriculturally literate citizens supportive of wise agricultural policies and programs. Ag in the Classroom aims at getting educators to teach more about the source of our food and fiber and the role of agriculture in the total economy and society. Emphasis is placed on incorporating the following basic concepts into a wide variety of subjects that are already being taught in the schools.

1. Agriculture and history. Agriculture issues or events as major influence in human history, from making possible societies, to current world food issues.
2. The geography of agriculture. What grows where and why.
3. Agriculture science and technology. How science and technology have changed American agriculture in the last 100 years.
4. The economics of agriculture. How the agriculture sector works and the interrelationship of U.S. agriculture with the rest of the economy. Effects of supply and demand, how prices are determined, changing interactions of the factors of production, farming as a business, agribusiness.
5. Agriculture and the world. World food production and distribution and its relationship to American agriculture.
6. Careers. Careers now and in the future.
7. Major policy issues. Land use and conservation, biotechnology impact on agriculture, world food supplies for the future and other issues.