Why Ag in the Classroom?
Agriculture means survival. Over time, fewer and fewer people have close contact with farming and the total agricultural sector. They’re not aware of their own and society’s total dependence on agriculture. People must be agriculturally literate in order to make responsible decisions affecting this giant lifeline.
Teaching students to be agriculturally literate brings their learning to life. Helping students understand the farm-to-table connection is important in our consumer-driven society. That’s what the student Minnesota AgMag Series is all about.
About Your AgMag
The AgMag is a great supplement to your social studies, science, or language arts curriculum. The AgMag has a particular appeal to the study of Minnesota history and geography. You’ll get two issues per school year: October, and March.
AgMag Theme: The Many Faces of Agriculture
- The Story of Minnesota Agriculture
- Sharing Culture Through Food
- The Many Faces and Stories of Minnesota Agriculture
- Water Power on the Mississippi
- You say Sambusa, I say YUM!
Integration Ideas
Social Studies
- Invite students to learn about when their families first came to America, or about their early American ancestors. Students could prepare a presentation on their ancestors’ experience, or write an informative article (like those on page 4-5) about their family’s story of living in or coming to Minnesota.
- Pages 6 & 7 can prompt a discussion about water in your students’ community and how it affects them. Is the water used for recreation, transportation, or power? What would happen if that resource was no longer available?
- Page 8 Many cultures have foods very similar to Sambusas – Empanadas from Mexico, Pirozhkis from Russia, etc.. Have students share what they’d put into their ideal Sambusa, research another culture’s stuffed pastry, or simply ask them if they’ve ever eaten a stuffed pastry. You could also connect page 8 with Vern DeFoe’s article on page 3 and ask students to recommend a Sambusa using foods that are native to MN.
Glossary
Some words in your AgMag may be unfamiliar to your students. Many are defined in the articles. There is also a glossary on the AgMag website: http://mnagmag.org/glossary/
Words you might wish to pre-teach are:
AGRICULTURE: Growing plants and raising animals that people use for food, clothing and many other things every day. It’s also harvesting those farm products and getting them to us so we can use them.
Agriculture is the industry that grows, harvests, processes, and brings us food, fiber, fish, forests, sod, landscaping materials, and more. It uses soil, water, sun, and air to produce its products. The process starts on farms, orchards, gardens, and ranches with the growing and the harvesting of crops and livestock, then moves to processing plants before finally traveling as finished products to stores, farm markets, lumberyards, greenhouses, and more where consumers buy the products. Agriculture is connected in some way with almost everything we eat, wear, and use.
Quote from an Unknown Source: “Agriculture is not simply farming. It’s the supermarket, the equipment factory, the trucking system, the overseas shipping industry, the scientist’s laboratory, the houses we live in, and much more. It has an effect on the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the water we drink, and the food we eat.”
Minnesota Academic Standards Connection
| Subject | Standard Code | Benchmark |
| Social Studies: History | 6.4.18.1 | Describe how Dakota and Anishinaabe people today narrate their own history, including seasonal lifeways in the pre-contact period. |
| Social Studies: History | 6.4.22.2 | Examine the history and memory of migration and immigration in Minnesota during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the impact of immigration on Indigenous people. |
| Social Studies: History | 6.4.21.1 | Evaluate the impact of big business, industrialization, farming and/or technology on the use of natural resources within different communities in Minnesota. Organize applicable evidence into a coherent argument about the past. |
| Social Studies: Geography | 6.3.15.1 | Explain how physical features and the location of resources affect settlement patterns, including those of Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples, and the growth of cities. |
| Social Studies: Ethnic Studies | 6.5.21.1 | Examine how and why the Minnesota landscape has been shaped by people. |
| Social Studies: Ethnic Studies | 6.5.24.2 | Identify individuals, community organizations, businesses and corporations that make the student’s community in Minnesota unique. Analyze how these groups do community building efforts, specifically by racialized and marginalized groups/individuals in Minnesota. |
AgMag Cover – The Many Faces of Minnesota Agriculture
Discussion Prompts
- What is Agriculture?
- Agriculture is the industry that grows, harvests, and brings us food, fuel, fiber/fabric, forestry and flowers.
Page 2: Minnesota Agriculture
Discussion Prompts
- What food, fiber, turf/landscape, or forest businesses are in your community?
- Do you know anyone who works for an agriculture business or on a farm?
Match it up Answers
| Agribusiness | Raw Product | Processed Product |
| Gold’n Plump | chicken | packaged chicken |
| Hormel | hogs | pepperoni and ham |
| Crystal Sugar | sugarbeets | sugar |
| Kemps | milk | ice cream |
| Faribault Woolen mill | wool | blankets |
| Gedney | cucumbers | pickles |
| General Mills | oats/grain | granola Bars |
| Bushel Boy | tomatoes | packaged tomatoes |
Page 3: Sharing Culture Through Food
Discussion Question
- What does the land mean to you? How are you connected to the land?
- What food or recipe is part of your family culture?
- Why is it important to remember our culture?
Indigenous Foods Native to Minnesota
Have students circle which foods they’ve tried. Consider having a discussion about foods native to Minnesota. Encourage students to try native foods when they have the opportunity to do so.
Show a map of North America so students can visualize how the trade networks of the Mayan, Aztec, Incas, and Miami might have looked and the role rivers played. Resources can be found here.
https://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/nat_amer/pre/htmls/m_trade.html There’s a visual in this link: https://openendedsocialstudies.org/tag/cahokia/
Page 4-5: The Many Faces and Stories of Minnesota Agriculture
Minnesota is a wonderful and diverse place. There are people whose families have been here for generations, whose families and ancestors are native to this land, and there are those whose families immigrated 200 years ago, 50 years ago, or maybe even this year!
Discussion Question
- How are the experiences of recent immigrants like Rodrigo Cala and the Hang family similar to the experiences of Wendelin Grimm in the 19th century? How are their experiences different?
- All three grew up learning about agriculture in their homeland and brought that experience with them to the United States.
- All three left their families behind in their country to move to a new, unfamiliar place and start a new life.
- Rodrigo and the Hang family moved to a climate that was much different than the one they left, while Wendelin Grimm immigrated from Germany that has a similar climate to Minnesota.
- How are their experiences similar or different from that of your family’s story of living or coming to Minnesota?
- What lessons can we learn from these three immigrants about coming to a new place or situation?
- Perseverance to keep going
- Trying new things
- Hard Work pays off
- Farmers come from all backgrounds and places
Invite students to learn about when their families first came to America, or about their early American ancestors.
Additional Resources
For more information on programs that support emerging farmers, please visit these resources:
https://www.mda.state.mn.us/emerging-farmers-working-group
https://www.fortyacre.coop/
Page 6 & 7: Water Power on the Mississippi
Discussion Question
- Have you ever heard of a treaty? How did treaties between the U.S. Government and the Dakota people change the history of Minnesota?
- Land loss: The Dakota were forced to give up nearly all their land in Minnesota
- White Settlement: European immigrants settled new farms and towns across Minnesota
- What role does the Mississippi river play in Minnesota?
- Transportation of important agricultural products
- Drinking water
- Recreation
- Animal habitat
- Power at St. Anthony Falls for flour mills
- Why is transportation important in agriculture?
- The ability to transport produce from rural agricultural areas to places where it can be manufactured into food for human consumption is important. Moving agricultural products to cities with higher populations means that farmers can make a profit and there is less waste of their produce.
The Mississippi River
As an additional resource to this page, watch this video with your students. Discuss as a class why the Mississippi river plays such an important role in Minnesota’s history, as well as its present. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWHp6MtjPqk&ab_channel=CGEEmultimedia
Discussion Questions for AgMag article:
- What examples can you give of how the Mississippi River changed Minnesota?
- The ability to power flour mills at St. Anthony Falls which allowed businesses like Pillbury and Washburn Crosby to make flour and ship it across the country.
- The Mississippi River has supported people for thousands of years. Without it many of the Native people who first lived in Minnesota and the European immigrants who came later could not have survived.
- What are some ways that we can protect our natural resources in our own communities, like St. Anthony Falls and the Mississippi River have been protected?
- Conserve Water – shorter showers, turning off the faucet when brushing your teeth, capturing rainwater to water flowers.
- Try not to disturb the land near water to protect the soil from erosion.
- Turn off lights when you leave a room to conserve electricity.
- What are some more examples of how agriculture has helped our state change and grow?
- Agriculture has helped create jobs throughout the state.
- Agriculture in Minnesota has helped feed people throughout the state and the world.
- Agricultural opportunities in Minnesota has brought people to the state from around the world.
Page 8: You say Sambusa, I say YUM!
Encourage students to learn about the country of Somalia and how they share their culture through food. Consider making the ChickPea Salad in class for everyone to try.
- More about the Hoyo Sambusa company and where their Sambusa’s can be purchased can be found on their website https://www.hoyosambusa.com/
AgMag 6 Fall Quiz
- Which raw agricultural product is used to create ethanol fuel?
A. Chicken
B. Corn
C. Oats
D. Sugarbeets - Which of the following foods is native to Minnesota?
A. Beef
B. Chicken
C. Elk
D. Pork - What factors caused immigrants to move to and live in Minnesota permanently?
A. Access to land
B. Opportunities to grow food
C. Family connections
D. All of the above - What natural resources caused Minneapolis to be an important place for flour milling?
A. Air
B. Soil
C. Sunlight
D. Water - Sambusas are a pastry that originated in which country?
A. Mexico
B. Germany
C. China
D. Somalia
