Agricultural & Environmental Awareness Day

Third and fourth grade students from elementary schools in Tift County and surrounding areas participate in Ag and Environmental Awareness Day. Twice a year, once during spring planting and the other during fall harvest, students swarm the Tifton Campus, where they see as many as 30 learning stations covering subjects from peanuts to poultry, solar panels to snakes and pretty much everything else between the dirt and the sky. The focus is on agricultural production and environmental stewardship.

History of the Event

The first Agricultural and Environmental Awareness Day was held on the University of Georgia’s Tifton Campus in April 2001 and was the brainchild of researcher Benjie Baldree. Mr. Baldree recognized the need to educate students on the many aspects of food and fiber production here in Georgia, and he was concerned that children really had no idea of where their food came from. He devised a program for students to come as third-graders in the spring of each year to plant the crops and then to return as fourth-graders to harvest those crops in the fall of the next year.

Though the program began with only 60 third-grade students from Tift County’s Omega Elementary School, it has grown to include other counties and many more students. Today the students are offered different presentations dealing with agriculture and the environment. Presenters from many organizations volunteer their time and resources to make this event a success. Topics correspond to the Georgia Performance Standards. Presentations are designed to provide the student with knowledge and skills needed for third- and fourth-grade proficiencies in science.