Background Agricultural Connections
If you were to take a moment to look around and identify the items you rely on every day, they would likely include food, clothing, modes of transportation such as cars or bikes, building materials such as steel or wood, various technological devices such as cell phones or computers, and several tools and machines. Where did these items and raw materials used to make them originate? This lesson helps students answer that question.
Many people might recognize that farms provide us with whole, raw foods like fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, and eggs. They might even recognize that foods such as bread, pasta, cheese, frozen chicken nuggets, and canned foods also come from a farm, but are first prepared and packaged at a food processing facility. However, in reality, agriculture also provides us with a wide variety of raw materials used make clothes, books, cosmetics, medicine, sports equipment, and much more.
Everything we make and use in society can originally be found somewhere in our environment or it is produced on farms by using natural resources such as land and water. Resources such as metal and glass are made from minerals that are extracted from the earth through the process of mining. Most plastics are a byproduct of oil which is extracted from beneath the Earth's surface. Other items we rely on from day-to-day are products of agriculture. Farms exist in numerous sizes and various locations and include many different products ranging from food and clothing to fuel and building supplies.
While many day-to-day items were built, processed or manufactured at a factory and eventually sold at a store, it is important for students to understand that they each began as a resource of the natural world and/or a product of agriculture.
