Thursday is Agriculture Career Day at the New York State Fair. The day is designed to get young people excited about the diverse possibilities for future jobs in the agricultural industry.
The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets and Department of Labor are teaming up with the Career Challenge, an educational scavenger hunt with interactive exhibits designed to help young fairgoers learn about a wide variety of career options and connect directly with industry and education representatives with a chance to win prizes, including a Nintendo Switch.
The Career Challenge is a scavenger hunt around the Fairgrounds, where participants visit nine stations featuring hands-on activities that tie in with an agriculture career path to learn more about the various agriculture-related careers available to young people today and in the future. Young people interested in participating in the Agriculture Career Day events should register at the Main Gate and move through the Fairgrounds to various stops of the Career Challenge.
At each station, hosts from New York Agriculture in the Classroom, Future Farmers of America (FFA), SUNY Morrisville, SUNY Cobleskill, and more will talk about the career opportunities in that field of food and agriculture as participants complete an interactive task. Stops this year will help participants to:
- understand that all the products we use each day begin on a farm;
- sequence the steps of milk from farm to table, and identify related careers;
- identify the costs associated with producing New York food products; and
- learn about agricultural career paths, including:
- environmental systems,
- power, structural, and technical systems,
- dairy processing,
- natural resources, and
- plant systems.
Participants who complete six out of the nine stops and turn their cards in to the Agriculture Career Day tent at the Main Gate by 2:30 pm will be entered in a drawing to win one of two Nintendo Switches.
