Alexis St. John looked over the flower arrangement on the table before her. It needed some baby’s breath.

Maybe she understood that the design elements of flower arrangements can be applied to website design, posters, interior decoration — almost any career that relies on eye appeal to succeed.

Maybe she understood that by working with a living medium, flowers, she needed to understand the science of horticulture, the ways to grow flowers and keep them thriving together.

She absolutely understood she could just as easily sell the flower arrangement that would, that night, rest in front of a Mayfield Central School District board member. Maybe she could make a career of it.

“I could. I’m pretty good at it,” the 17-year-old senior said this week.

Ag is more than farming

Mayfield schools, like the nearby Greater Johnstown School District, are in the second year of establishing an agriculture education curriculum. They take different approaches, but many of their goals overlap: to have students graduate from the public school system with an understanding of the local and national food system, and their roles in it.

“There are over 300 jobs attached to agriculture,” said Ellen Roehl, an elementary teacher and the AgriQuest department leader for Johnstown schools. “That’s why we steer away from owning a farm.”

Agriculture is a $9 million industry in Fulton County, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports. That $9 million is produced by about 200 farms, a fraction of the $126 million generated by 500 farms in neighboring Montgomery County, or the $360 million from 435 farms in Genesee County.

But raising farmers isn’t the point, said Johnstown Superintendent Alicia Koster. Raising people who understand where their food comes from is, particularly because so many are at risk of food insecurity. The number of disadvantaged kids, eligible for free or reduced lunches, tops 56% in the district, up 30 points from 20 years ago.

“We think about providing opportunities so kids can learn where their food comes from,” Koster said. “And when kids come to school nourished and well-rested, then the learning happens.”

Plows, cows and sows

Raising farmers also isn’t the point for Brandon Trinkle, an agriculture teacher at Mayfield, at least not directly. He expects most of his students to go in agriculture-adjacent trades: welding and fabrication; mechanics and equipment repair; and digital skills because farms increasingly move data as much as they move milk and corn.

“Agriculture is not just farming,” he said. “It’s not just plows, cows and sows.”

Trinkle was Mayfield’s first agriculture teacher, but was joined this year by Mikenzie Stahl. Trinkle said he focuses more on trade-oriented lessons; Stahl has a more science-y background, so think biology, horticulture and those disciplines. Farmers need both.

“I could see some of our students in welding careers, HVAC,” Trinkle said. “A lot of our students will go into the trades.”

And they’ll need business skills. Lilly Perham, a 16-year-old junior, was busy counting cash from a recent produce sale as Stahl and Trinkle talk. She’s in agriculture for the long haul.

Maybe she’ll get into beef ranching — she just bought her first beef calf. She wouldn’t mind raising goats and horses, too.

“This is my life. I grew up in it and always loved my animals,” Perham said. “I know a lot about it; it’s just the education I have.”

A lesson in growth

The education in the back of the classroom a couple of days later was making pumpkin cookies out of Hubbard squash. Trinkle warned his students that the squash was still hot in the oven, and they were going to need to tweak the recipes because — while culinarily very similar — hubbard and pumpkin do have some differences.

“When you scoop the squash, don’t get the rind; it’s nasty,” he called. “People don’t like nasty food.”

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