BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — The Ag Innovators Experience grant is a collaboration between National 4-H Council and Bayer that provides 6,000 youth in six (6) selected states, from urban, suburban and rural backgrounds, the opportunity to develop the workforce skills to feed the planet. The AIE will drive youth awareness of, and interest in, agriculture innovation and agriculture careers.
Katie Buckley, McLean County 4-H Youth Development Educator and lead on the grant for Illinois, states that according to the USDA’s report, Employment Opportunities for College Students in Food, Agriculture, Renewable Natural Resources and the Environment 2020-2025, the number of agricultural jobs that require a science or engineering degree are expected to continue to increase in the coming years, and diverse graduates with strong STEM skills will be essential to develop the technologies that support feeding the world in a sustainable way. In order to increase rural and urban youths’ interest in the wide range of careers available, Illinois Extension 4-H professionals, working collaboratively with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Center for Digital Agriculture, will create the AIE Feeding the World Challenge.
The Feeding the World Challenge will be a visually engaging, hands-on, and culturally relevant instructive escape room challenge for youth to learn about agricultural technologies. Research has shown educational escape rooms promote engagement, develop social skills, and ignite students’ interest. Youth will learn about technologies including robotics, IoT, seed genetics, and sensor technologies, while solving a variety of linear and non-linear games in order to achieve the goal of feeding the world.
Students will learn how technologies are used to help farmers produce more food, and more importantly how advancing technologies in each part of the food chain will be necessary to feed a world population of 9.3 billion by 2050.
— University of Illinois Extension
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