NEW! Updated Contest Format for Top Cut Beef Experience

The Top Cut: Beef Contest is an engaging cross-curricular educational and culinary experience for grades 6-12. Participating students will design a beef recipe focused on the theme of school lunch and then develop a creative marketing strategy for their product. New York Agriculture in the Classroom and New York Beef Council are excited to offer this contest for the seventh year. 

NEW! New this year is an updated contest format. The Top Cut Beef Experience will be offered in both the fall and spring so that teachers with classes that switch out each semester may participate with all of their classes. The contest will no longer require pre-registration to participate and each teacher that has students submit a completed entry will receive a prize for their classroom.

New York Spuds Virtual Field Trip

Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 10 am

To make New York Chips special, the Marquart family and partner farms start with their home-grown New York Spuds. These hard-working farmers started planting their seed potatoes last spring and tended their crop through the hot summer months. As cooler temperatures arrive, the harvest begins. Once harvested, these "home-grown" potatoes are either sold as bagged New York Spuds or processed to make delicious New York Chips.

Join us as we tour Marquart Farms to learn about the potato life cycle, how potatoes are harvested, and what makes this region of western New York special for growing premium potatoes.

Grow-NY Youth Competition

Our youth are the next generation of business developers, agriculture, food, and technology leaders. With the hope of inspiring and investing in the future of food, outstanding middle and high school youth will be selected to attend the 2023 Grow-NY competition and pitch their business idea to a panel of youth judges.

New for this year, youth-specific entrepreneur workshops will be offered during each day of the contest. If you would like to bring a group of students to attend the Grow-NY competition on one or both days in November to watch the business pitches and connect with the entrepreneurs in food and agriculture, up to 100 students will be admitted at no charge to the event. More details on registering your students will be forthcoming, but we would welcome your participation and engagement in the event.

New Feature on Morning Ag Clips

Morning Ag Clips sends out breaking local and national agricultural news every day through their state-by-state e-blast, on the web, and in their app. Their audience, made up of farmers, ranchers, and ag industry leaders, comes to us for the quick one-two on agriculture happenings every day.

Morning Ag Clips has upgraded their search abilities on their website so that you can now search by keyword, topic, and state. This is a great tool for educators that teach about agriculture. Educators and students can easily find current and relevant articles about agriculture for lessons, essays, projects, and more.

NAITCO Request for Workshop Proposals

National Agriculture in the Classroom is seeking workshop proposals for the 2024 NAITC Conference "Agriculture Elevated" scheduled for June 24-27, 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Proposals must demonstrate how the workshop uses agricultural concepts to meet the National Agricultural Literacy Outcomes (NALOs) and teach reading, writing, math, nutrition, science, STEM, social studies and other subject areas. Proposals also must reach early elementary (grades pre-kindergarten-2), upper elementary (grades 3-5), middle school (grades 6-8), high school (9-12) or all grades. The main workshop presenter of accepted proposals will receive a discount of $50.00 off the early-bird conference registration. 

CHS Classroom Grants

CHS Foundation provides $500 grants each year to pre-kindergarten-12th grade teachers who have classroom projects that use agricultural concepts to teach reading, writing, math, science, social studies and more. Eligible projects include classroom and schoolyard gardens, embryology projects, aquaculture projects and agricultural literacy reading programs to name a few. Teachers have until June 1 the following year to complete the project and submit a final report. Only state-certified classroom teachers employed by a school district or private school teachers are eligible to apply.