New programming introduced by the University of Manitoba’s Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre is giving students a hands on opportunity to work with and learn about a variety of food products.
The Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre was opened in 2011 to give the general public, youth and industry a place to learn about modern farming and food production.
Guy Robbins, the centre’s visitor services manager, says new programming developed for the schools offers students a hands on opportunity to work with and learn about specific food products.
We do eggs, potatoes, dairy and wheat and so what the school classes will do, they’ll come into the centre from about 10:00 to about 3:00 and then they’ll spend the whole day for instance finding out about eggs, everything of the science of eggs and then they’ll end up actually cooking with eggs and making food with eggs so then they get a very good idea about eggs and what it needs to produce eggs and the science of eggs and so they get a practical experience with farming but also with creating food and also they’ll cover the science and the social science in the curriculum.
We’d been doing school programming and that had gone very well but we thought we really wanted to focus in on some really practical things and get the kids involved with not only learning about the eggs or wheat, what ever but making food from it so they’d get a lot of good hands on experience, they’d get a lot of fun out of it but hopefully they were learning about their food and the good policies they should have and also learning about agriculture as well.
Robbins says about 30 schools have come through the centre this spring and been involved in the new program, the kids have had a great time and the teachers have been happy with the program as well.
