Moving plant and animal species to new environments can be beneficial, but can often cause environmental and economic harm.
The next time you are outdoors, introduce the term invasive species to children and discuss its meaning by asking:
• How would this area look different if a family of elephants lived here?
• What impact would the elephants have on the plants and animals nearby?
• Where do elephants live in the wild? Why don’t elephants live here?

Ideas for integrating food into the classroom from guest blogger Sarah Anderson.
*Making personal placemats
*Narrative Writing
*Research Paper
*Mapping Foods
*Podcasts

Students will learn about issues concerning soil and water and how farmers use science to help conserve these resources.

Students will sequence photographs to tell the story of Seed to Cereal, while learning about corn production, beef production, ethanol production, and food production in general.

Students will compare and contrast corn and soybean plants, the growth and development, and how each are used for different purposes and make different products that all of us use daily. Students will also learn and identify the parts of a monocot and dicot and measure growth.

Students will work to solve math problems relating to volume, while learning about corn production in Iowa.

This 13-minute video looks at the development of agriculture and writing in the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras of the Stone Age. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 67 of 85]

This 14-minute video lesson considers energy consumption required for tilling land. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 84 of 85]

This 13-minute video lesson ponders how we get calories from the land and the limits of human population density. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 83 of 85]

Students will be able to understand how heredity affects agricultural decisions regarding wanted traits in animals, and will understand that DNA contains genes which carry traits from generation to generation.

The students will be able to identify food groups and healthy food options.

Saline soils are a major soil issue. In this video, we discuss how saline soils reduce plant productivity and what crops preform better in saline soils.

Students learn how the process of soil solarization is used to pasteurize agricultural fields before planting crops. Soil solarization is a pest control technique in agriculture that uses the sun’s radiation to heat the soil and eliminate unwanted pests that could harm the crops. The approach is compared to other pest control methods such as fumigation and herbicide application, highlighting the respective benefits and drawbacks. In preparation for the associated hands-on activity on soil biosolarization, students learn how changing the variables involved in the solarizing process (such as the tarp material, soil water content and addition of organic matter) impacts the technique’s effectiveness. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post-quiz is provided.

Milk, leche, lait. No matter what you call it, real milk offers tons of nutrition and is sustainably produced—and we've got the receipts. Come behind the scenes on a tour of a virtual dairy farm. There are 5 sections to work through, when you complete the section, your milk jug fills up!!!

A video about what a day on a Saskatchewan Dairy Farm is like.

Ever wonder what it's like to be a John Deere Precision Agriculture Specialist? Hear from Weston Martensen about his journey from going through the John Deere Tech Program, becoming a technician, to now being a precision ag specialist at Platte Valley Equipment.

"This video clearly shows what an average day is like for an agricultural technician apprentice. An agricultural technician is almost like a mechanic for agricultural equipment. They deal with everything from tractors to combine harvesters and potato planters."

A study from the University of Guelph in 2016 found farmers are among the most vulnerable groups when it comes to mental health, reporting higher levels of stress, depression, emotional exhaustion, and burnout than the general population. The same study found that 40 percent of agricultural producers would feel uneasy getting professional help due to the stigma that exists around the issue.

There are many ways a producer may choose to market their crops. As such developing a crop marketing plan is an important part of managing a farm's total business risk. Understanding the steps and options available can assist producers in determining the type of crops grown, marketing tools available, when to establish price targets, and how to determine profitability