For more than a decade, we have been proud to be a Supporting Sponsor of Oregon Ag Fest, a two-day event the last weekend in April with more than 20,000 people who experience dozens of hands-on activities across the state fairgrounds. In addition to our financial contribution, we host a booth with giveaways for the kids who can also plant tomato starts to take home and adults can test their knowledge of Oregon agriculture with a trivia question and an Oregon-made prize on the line. We greatly appreciate booth volunteers and donations of prizes to giveaway, so shoot us an email at info@aglink.org if you’re interested!
We collaborate with Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom to enhance our Adopt a Farmer program and as a resource for the requests we get that fall outside of the program. We encourage participating teachers to utilize the abundance of resources the foundation has and often use activities like Turf Buddies in classrooms with our participating farmers during visits to schools. During the 2018-2019 school year, we joined together for a Farm to School grant through the Oregon Department of Education in partnership with the Oregon Beef Council and the Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council.
We are proud Gold Sponsors of the Oregon Dairy Princess Ambassadors, a program of the Oregon Dairy Women. The outreach efforts the girls engage in reaching consumers all over the state, at events, the Capitol, and schools, including more than 14,000 students a year through classroom visits is impressive! They also help out at our golf tournament and Denim & Diamonds awards dinner and auction.
We have had a long history with Oregon Women in Agriculture (OWA), which includes collaboration on one of the longest lasting consumer education programs in the state: crop identification signs, which is a project that OWA members started and we helped expand. OWA is a member of our association and our executive director serves as 1st vice president of OWA. Members of OWA contribute more than 100 hours a year to our Adopt a Farmer program.
Not only were we part of the founding board for this new natural resource leadership program in our state, we are an annual Ruby sponsor, and also look to sponsor board members and staff to participate. The program exposes a cross-section of representatives from Oregon’s natural resource community to the diversity of our state’s geography, economy, and cultures.
We work to spread the word to our Adopt a Farmer (AAF) teachers about Summer Ag Institute (SAI), an amazing three-credit, week-long, graduate-level class through Oregon State University that educates K-12 teachers with little or no background in agriculture. We sponsor the program annually, as well as offer a scholarship to one AAF teacher because the goal of SAI is to help educators use agriculture as a context for teaching standard subjects like science, math, social studies, and English. Current, factual, and scientific information about agriculture is presented, and participants are provided with educational materials to help them incorporate what they’ve learned into their classrooms.