Urban farming: Students in Texas raise, show and sell livestock at local schools

Alex Kipple, 17, lets her lamb into one of the livestock pens at McNeil High School on Friday. Kipple and dozens of other McNeil students participate in the school’s FFA chapter, where the students learn about agriculture and are responsible for the care of their animals. Photo by Kelly West.

1,000 Texas Future Farmers of America chapters in public schools

By Andrea Ball
The American Statesman
Nov. 26, 2011

Excerpt:

The pigs are squealing, the chickens clucking, the lambs playing, the goats bleating, and the steers standing in their pen. It’s a typical morning at McNeil High School.

Livestock at school? In a part of Central Texas where people are more likely to work at Dell than run a farm?

Absolutely. Behind the brick buildings, parking lots and ball fields on the North Austin campus is a small farm funded and operated by more than 40 animal-loving students willing to spend hours a day caring for livestock.

“I want to be a vet, and this is helping me get into it,” said Hannah Hardwick, a 16-year-old sophomore. “I just think it’s so fun caring for the animals.”

McNeil is no anomaly. The 80-animal farm is one of more than 1,000 Texas Future Farmers of America chapters in public schools across the state that educate kids about agriculture.

Read the complete article here.