(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture visited the new Career Ag Academy on the Hamilton County Fairgrounds in Webster City over the weekend. Mike Naig says high school students there can receive dual-credit courses with Iowa Central Community College and with Iowa State University.  “I’ve been able to tour some really good models around the state,” Naig says, “bringing livestock, bringing that opportunity to get our high school students a hands-on opportunity. I know I learned better where you match that in classroom with the experiential learning. Of course, it’s one of the things that we love about ag education and FFA in particular.”

The academy has been active since the start of the current school year, working to educate students about agriculture.”We really need to create these pathways where it’s not just farm kids that are getting a chance to do these types of things and be around livestock and get the experience of doing chore, but any kid, any student, regardless of where you come from, can get to do that,” Naig says. “We need more people working in ag, and if we’re going to get more people working in ag, we need students from all backgrounds to learn about those opportunities.”

Naig says he’d like to see more such career ag academies pop up all over Iowa. “You got to learn to do chore and you got to learn what’s the right feed ration and how do you create the right environment for those animals? But then, of course, you’re going to connect the dots and you’re going to talk about, well, where’s that feed come from? What’s the grain side of it? Oh, also, how about the meat side of it, the nutrition side of it, the culinary arts?” Naig says. “I mean, you really start to string this together and it’s just a farm-to-fork kind of experience.”

Ground was broken on the facility last March. It houses classrooms, a dedicated livestock learning area and meat lab. A date has not yet been announced for its official grand opening and open house for the public.