Farm Bureau program may inspire new Plano ag curriculum

Plano High School on Abe Street is situated in the middle of farm fields, so it’s natural that someone would eventually suggest bringing agriculture-related classes into the curriculum.

Finally, after several years of watching farmers work a 13-acre plot next to the school, students may be out there in the near future getting their boots and hands in the soil if Superintendent Hector Garcia and Kurt Schobert, a Kendall County Farm Bureau member and chairman of the Farm Bureau’s Young Leaders program, have their way.

A few years ago, before Garcia joined the district, the land was being farmed with the proceeds from the crop sales going back to the district. But the district had to pay taxes on the money received because it was considered a profit, so they came close to breaking even, he said.

Schobert said he asked Garcia if the district would ever consider entering into a nonprofit arrangement to farm the field with the Young Leaders and the Farm Bureau.

He suggested Young Leaders members could farm the district’s land and donate the proceeds from the grain sales to the district for a summer horticulture enrichment program for the students. The Young Leaders is a group of county men and women ages 18-35 who meet monthly to discuss projects they can do to help others.

“We could always go back to the other agreement of having someone farm it for us if this did not work out,” Garcia said, so he agreed to the offer.

So this past year Schobert and the Young Leaders took over the field next to Plano High School.

Schobert said Young Leaders members helped till, plant and keep tabs on the crop.

Schobert said the corn crop was sold for $8,942 and divided up three ways between the high school for its program, the Young Leader Program, and the county’s Agriculture in the Classroom program.

He said they had no expenses because of business donations.

“If we had expenses the profit would have been about $200,” Schobert said.

The Elburn Coop donated fertilizer, seed and chemicals, and custom spraying of crops when needed.

Grainco FS and the Elburn Coop hauled the grain, which totaled about 2,400 bushels, he said.

“No students were involved this year because it was a trial run,” Schobert said. “But now I’d love to see some kids in the field. That’s where they can get involved and learn.”

When it was time to harvest the first corn crop planted and tended by the Young Leaders last year, Schobert gave Garcia a ride in the combine – a machine that picks the corn and separates the kernels from the stalks.

After spending nearly the entire morning riding in the comfortable cab of the giant machine, Garcia was hooked. He talked about the modern electronics and digital panels in the cab that keep the operator continuously informed about various things including the moisture level in the corn as it was being picked.

This made Garcia realize there’s more to farming and agriculture than just planting and harvesting crops.

“These are complex machines that require highly skilled people to keep them operating properly and repair them when there are problems. The computer programming of the equipment is another level requiring professionals and then there are the mechanical engineers who build the machines,” he said.

Plano students are offered biology, chemistry, physics and business classes, but currently there are no direct connections between these classes and agriculture.

“But if we work together with this organization and our staff, we can find problem-based opportunities for our kids to learn,” Garcia said.

Garcia thinks every teacher in the high school could find a way to include their subject in an agricultural project or lesson.

“I’m imagining kids of all ages participating in some way – even the little guys [elementary level] who could be planting seeds or doing soil tests,” Garcia said.

Students could even learn chemistry and biology by having soil and fertilizer experts talk to them, as well as farmers who could talk about the types of crops they could grow, he said.

“I’m sure some of these companies would send one of their experts to our school for one or two hours. We just need to give them our vision of what we want to do. I think they would be willing to be guest speakers. They just haven’t been asked before. They’re all over. We’re located right in the middle of all these experts and we need to take advantage of them,” Garcia said.

Garcia sees this as an enrichment opportunity for kids. And he thinks they are limited only by their imagination as to how far they can go and what they can do with this project.

The project also means new challenges and experiences for the high school teachers, Garcia said.

“We’re hoping to work toward having our science courses connect to the multiple opportunities that this field can offer,” he said.

During his most recent meeting with Garcia, Schobert said they talked about starting a technology club.

“Technology in agriculture is everything right now. It’s huge. [And] there are lots of jobs in technology. Lots of people who graduate from college have no idea what agriculture is but they end up working for John Deere, or Case-IH, or with GPS or unmanned aerial vehicles,” he said.

Schobert said they initially thought about some kind of summer ag program for the students, but that would require the right teacher, he said.

Garcia said he hopes to have the class curriculum complete within the next two to three months so they can prepare for it.

“We have some ideas,” he said, noting that another staff member is highly involved in horticulture.

“Maybe a greenhouse out there could help develop an interest because you could see a plant actually grow,” Garcia said, adding that this could lead to students becoming involved in science.

Even though Plano is in the heart of the agricultural belt in Kendall County, Garcia said the percentage of district students living on farms is quite small.

Because of this, he said a majority of their students are not aware of the vast opportunities that farming or agriculture has in science, math and business.

“How would they know? It’s not in our curriculum,” Garcia said.

“I was interested when Kurt told me about the job growth opportunities and how vast the industry is. It made sense that they’re going to continue to need more and more students to become involved,” he said.

“I need to paint a picture for the students. Right now they just see a field, but we’re going to work on them and they’ll come around. We need to show them what opportunities are out there,” he said.

Reedy noted that there is a shortage of teachers trained in agriculture.

He said there are about 365 farms in Kendall County, but few are in Plano because the school district boundary is primarily in the city limits and Little Rock Township, part of which is in Sandwich.

It’s going to take the right teacher to do this, Schobert said.

He acknowledged that many Plano students probably won’t be striving to be farmers.

“But we’re showing them there are many areas to agriculture – farming is just a small part of agriculture. It’s bigger than just the farmer.

“We’d love to see this program evolve so more people would become involved. It could be a donation to the technology club, or a big corporation could help in other ways,” he said.

Garcia said he was joking with Kurt one day about having teams of physics students program the combine by GPS and mathematics to pick up a pumpkin at one end of a field, and take it to a specific location at the other end and see which team comes in closest to the goal.

“Our students are studying chemistry and the physics behind the equipment. Imagine AP [advanced placement] chemistry and AP biology labs right here. What class couldn’t I bring out here?” Garcia asked.

So before long, the old saying that a farmer is a man who is outstanding in his field may be joined by the saying that an agriculture student is a person who is outstanding in his, or her, field.