An overview of The Ag Blast

Hello, my name is Rebekah Aanerud. I am currently majoring in Agricultural Education and Agricultural Communications. When I complete my two degrees, I would like to either be an agricultural teacher at a high school or a public relations person at an Agribusiness.  Eventually, I would like to host agricultural and leadership based workshops for agribusinesses and corporations.

My passion for agriculture started at a young age. I grew up on a farm and I have been involved in 4-H and FFA for many years. I have also been showing and riding horses since I was nine. I believe that informing people on where their food comes from and sharing personal stories of agriculturalists is very important. Because of this belief, I started my own radio program, The Ag Blast, where I research, interview, write, and record agricultural stories for the radio script. The program gets aired on the first and third Saturday of every month. Since the start of the program in 2012, I have been looking for ways to expand the Ag Blast. For that reason, I have decided to start a blog to go more in depth on topics talked about on the radio show.

With agricultural education being the backbone of how agricultural information is spread, I would like to focus the first portion of my blog on the importance of agricultural education and how we can utilize our resources to promote agriculture in a positive and effective manner. Throughout the next ten entries, I will be discussing why agricultural education is important, what the three circle model of agricultural education is, why the lack of agricultural is becoming more of a crisis, how we can raise awareness for agricultural education, as well as different teaching strategies/curriculums that are available to agricultural teachers.

I would like to get to know my viewers on a more personal level. Please take the time to answer the following questions in the comment section below. Through this short survey, I will be able to cater my entries to what your knowledge of agricultural education already is and which topics I should go more in depth in. Thank you for your time!

1. How would you define agriculture?
2. Have you ever taken an agricultural-based class? Why or why not.
3. What does agricultural education mean to you?
4. Why do you think that not every school in the United States has agricultural education classes?
5. Why do you think that there is a lack of agricultural teachers?
6. What type of social media device do you think is the most effective and why?
7. Is there some part of agricultural education that you would like to learn more about?