With third-graders standing in a row on the brown crushed vines and potato-laden peat, Larry Forster taught a lesson.

“What vegetables grow under the ground?” he asked, holding a cascade potato at a farm near Clarks Grove.

“Carrots?” “Yes.” “Corn?” “No.” “Tomatoes?” “No.”

Many of the students had never been on a farm before Wednesday, said Forster, manager of the Hollandale Market Association.

But by the end of the school day, the group, as well as two other busloads of third-graders from area schools, had visited the potato farm, a hog farm and a dairy farm as part of a field trip sponsored by the Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce.

“In the U.S. we take our food for granted and we shouldn’t take it for granted,” Forster said. He said there’s a disconnect between the grocery store and the farm. “Some of these kids don’t know where the food they eat comes from.”

But he said trips like these give kids a chance to appreciate the agriculture.

“Next time, when you eat french fries, you can say you saw how they (potatoes) grow,” Forster said.

At Gary Braaten’s hog farm, kids held their noses when they neared the barns.

One asked how Braaten stands the smell, which wasn’t noticeable 15 feet from the barn. “You get used to it, sort of like with school,” he joked.

Braaten said it was “mind boggling” that some of the children said they’d never seen a live hog.

He said that as fewer children grow up on farms, and generations get farther away from farming, people lose touch with something that is part of the area they live in and a huge part of the food they eat.

“If you don’t educate them at an early age they don’t know what’s going on in ag,” Braaten said.

He said he also wanted the kids to see a farm with sanitary conditions and a healthy atmosphere.

“I want to set them straight because of all the misconceptions they see on TV,” he said.

He said third grade is the perfect age to educate children about agriculture, when they are old enough to understand the subject and still have the energy and excitement.

(Contact Tim Sturrock at tim.sturrock@albertleatribune.com or 379-3438.)