Lab would help build education program

A proposed land lab would be a building block for a larger agricultural education program within Sweetwater County School District No. 2.

The district’s board of trustees approved a request to apply for Bureau of Land Management land between Green River and James Town during the board’s meeting Feb. 9.

At the time, superintendent Craig Barringer said a land lab would be years away if the district decided to move forward with the initiative.

Liz Thoman, the FFA advisor at Green River High School, said the land would be utilized to create a school operated farm and barn and could house a program to breed and market sheep, cattle and swine.

“It would also offer Green River High School FFA students the opportunity to raise and house animals for the county fair during the spring and summer,” Thoman wrote in an email to the Star.

Thoman said there has been a decrease in the number of students able to raise a livestock animal and showcase it at the fair, which she said is essential to a complete agriculture learning program.

“Our inter-curricular program relies on three overlapping components which include classroom/laboratory learning, FFA and Supervised Agricultural Experiences. Students learn valuable principles through activities in FFA and then put them into real world practices,” she wrote.

She said students wouldn’t get a full grasp of raising livestock from the classroom alone, saying they would learn nutritional requirements in a classroom setting, but would be able to run trials in a laboratory setting on the farm, experimenting on varying nutritional levels in different livestock feeds on sibling market goats or lambs.

“All of these activities could be conducted with a level of engagement and continuity that cannot possibly be reached in a classroom setting alone,” she wrote.