Partnership with Destination Ag, Flint River SWCD to advance agricultural education in Dougherty County

ALBANY — Students in Dougherty County will have the opportunity this spring to participate in free programming at Chehaw to learn about agriculture and natural resources through a partnership between Destination Ag and the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District.

Registration begins Monday for the schools determined to be eligible to participate this year. The curriculum will be geared for second-grade students, and the program will take place at Chehaw on March 14 and April 4. Destination Ag lessons are meant to address various state standards, focusing on how humans can affect the environment, how force is used in agricultural machines, why understanding place value is important to farmers and on discovering the different stages of a chicken’s life cycle.

Flint River SWCD officials said students will also visit with Fredando “Farmer Fredo” Jackson, a farmer, food champion and executive director of Flint River Fresh, as well as the animals from Chehaw’s zoo.

Officials said the five schools in Dougherty randomly selected to participate in the program this year were Live Oak Elementary School, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, Sherwood Christian Academy, Lincoln Elementary Magnet School and Lamar Reese Magnet School of the Arts. Additional schools are expected to be contacted to participate as space allows.

Destination Ag is designed to provide students with hands-on learning experiences about agriculture and on natural resources. A donor-funded program of the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Georgia Museum of Agriculture, it was previously only available for on-site field trips for Berrien, Irwin, Tift, Cook and Colquitt counties.

The partnership with the Flint River SWCD brings programming to Dougherty with plans to expand to additional southwest Georgia counties in 2020.

The Flint River SWCD is an agency comprised of farmers, landowners and community leaders dedicated to the conservation, wise use and protection of natural resources in the Flint River basin. For more information about Flint River SWCD, visit flintriverswcd.org.

For more information on how to register, visit flintriverswcd.org/destination-ag. For further information about Destination Ag, visit www.abac.edu/museum/education/destinationag.

Tessa Green