Farmscape for May 8, 2007  (Episode 2478)

A new series of farm tours is giving Saskatchewan elementary school students a hands on opportunity to get "the real dirt on farming."

"The Real Dirt on Farming" is a series of school tours in which grades seven and eight students visit Saskatchewan farms to learn more about where their food comes from and about possible careers in agriculture.

Last week the first of three 2007 tours visited a dairy operation, a mixed grain and beef operation, the pork interpretive gallery and a potato farm.

Saskatchewan Pork Development Board agriculture education coordinator Jessica Poderdeski says the reaction has been very positive.

Clip-Jessica Poderdeski-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board

Of course, when we're going to farms where there are animals and if there are young animals, they seem to enjoy the babies the most but that kind of goes without saying.

When we were at the dairy farm they were able to witness milking and actually go directly down with the milkers to see how it happens.

Some of the students were fascinated at the amount of production.

For one instance, the amount of milk that the dairy farm of 360 milking cows produced in one day was 13 thousand litres.

The one student I spoke to was just amazed that they would be able to produce that much milk in one day.

Another instance would be just the grain farming.

We were standing on an area that was about four acres and then we mentioned that that particular farmer had 65 hundred acres of cropland.

To put that in perspective about the area, they were quite amazed at the space and the size of equipment that was used.

Two more tours, one in June and another in September, are set for this season.

Poderdeski says 225 students from five Saskatchewan schools are scheduled to take part this year and there's a waiting list for next year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council