Social Studies Grade Four
Concepts
Students will know that:
Students will:
Students will:
Students may:
Teacher background
Some pertinent information that may be incorporated in this study includes the following:
Use case studies and current events to learn about agriculture and related industries in Saskatchewan.
Topics for study include:
Guide the students in reflecting upon the impact of their choices in food. Thoughts to keep in mind while shopping for food include the following:
Gather information about the cultivation of each crop. Find out how it is planted, how it is harvested, what weeds and pests may damage it. Invite a farmer or elevator agent to talk to your class. Contact your district agricultural representative from the Department of Agriculture or write to the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool at 2625 Victoria Avenue, Regina.
Collect pictures of products
that are made from
Saskatchewan's crops.
Suggestions include:
Learn about agriculture in northern Saskatchewan. See Let's Go Berry Picking: Berry Picker's Manual and video and Wild Rice Growers Training Manual. See How Are Animals and People Dependent Upon Each Other? Collect brochures that illustrate and describe various types of agricultural (aquacultural) machinery and equipment. Use these brochures in a display or include them in your crops scrapbook.
Bring a model of a farm machine to school and explain how a farmer would use that machine. Create a farm machinery display.
Visit a bakery. How many Saskatchewan crops does the baker use in bread, cookies, and pastries. Watch the bread being mixed and baked. When you return draw a picture illustrating the raw materials, the process used, and the final product produced in the bakery. Bake bread at school. Identify the raw materials, the process, and the product.
Contact your Ag Rep to get the statistics for production of crops in recent years. Compare differences in production. Make a hypothesis as to why production may vary from one year to another. Interview the Ag Rep, a farmer, or consult some other source to check your hypothesis. Use trend extrapolation to predict the future.
Look at the poster Grain Farming (available from the Book Bureau) and included in the Saskatchewan Past and Present Kit. This poster features photos that illustrate grain farming from about 1895 to the present. Visit the Saskatoon Western Development Museum that has a collection of machinery used for farming during earlier times. Make your own poster that illustrates farm equipment from earliest times to the present.
View the filmstrip "Agriculture - Specialization and Interdependence" from the Saskatchewan Past and Present kit. Following the filmstrip, look at your own community to see what it specializes in. List all the ways your community contributes to the economy of Saskatchewan.
The poster Grain Farming includes a photo showing harvesting of wild rice in northern Saskatchewan. Buy some wild rice. Examine the grains of rice, then cook and taste the rice. Obtain information about the marketing of wild rice and locate markets on a map of the world. Speculate upon routes and methods for transporting wild rice to markets.
Note: Wild rice is a type of grass that grows naturally in northern Saskatchewan. Use the Student Information Page:Problem solving and agriculture. Have students read and solve the problem in the first scenario about farm pigs.
Use the second part of the page for students to identify and describe entrepreneurial activities in the wild rice industry.
Using Wild Rice Growers Training Manual learn about the use of the canoe and airboat in harvesting.
The discussion that follows may be guided by the following questions: Why do some of Riece's customers phone in the middle of the night? (That is the working day in Europe). What skills and abilities would you need to be an international businessman like Riese? Why do you think it is important to know the cultures of your clients? Do you think knowing other languages would be helpful also? What language do you think Riese uses when he does business?
Food Fair
Have a Saskatchewan Food Fair. Examine labels from foods you eat to determine which are grown or manufactured in Saskatchewan. Collect labels and containers from Saskatchewan products. Group containers into categories for display in the Food Fair.
Mark the location where each item in the Food Fair is produced on a Saskatchewan wall map. Make a tag for each item. Include the name of the product and the name and address of the company that manufactured the product. Tape the tag to the wall map. Discuss patterns that emerge. For example, why is the production of a particular food concentrated in one area?
Saskatchewan products Keep a record of everything you eat for a day. Which foods are grown and processed in Saskatchewan? Which come from other parts of Canada or the world?
Write to Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food Products (Development and Marketing Council, Administrative Building, 3085 Albert Street, Regina, Saskatchewan, S5S 0V1) and ask for recipes featuring Saskatchewan products. Prepare menus for one day including only Saskatchewan grown or processed foods. How would our diets change if we ate only Saskatchewan products. Discuss the environmental impact of importing foods. Include understandings that land in other countries which is being used to grow food for us is not being used to grow food for people in those countries. Consider factors such as transportation costs and keeping food fresh during transport. Consider alternate approaches to obtaining a diversity of food. For example, produce such as potatoes and carrots are imported during the winter. Could we produce these commodities in Saskatchewan and make better use of underground storage in keeping them for winter months?
Use class funds to purchase food so that you can have a class lunch composed entirely of Saskatchewan products.
Food and technology
Make a "technology food chain". Use resources such as pamphlets, films, videos, and speakers and to obtain information.
Use analogies to help students understand sustainable development. For example:
Develop understandings about the role of vegetation covers such as grasses and forests in looking after soils.
Compare the growth time for the grasses and trees. Discuss the implications of cutting wheat and trees.
Prince Albert NurseryThe Canada-Saskatchewan Agriculture Green Plan Agreement was signed in July 1993. The main objective of the agreement is to `promote the development and adoption of more environmentally sound production practice in Saskatchewan's agriculture and food industry.'Department of the Environment
and Resource Management, Forestry
Branch(attn: Joe Chernysh)
Box 3003
Prince Albert, SK
S6V 6G1
Tel: 953-3425
Contact any PFRA District Office or Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food Extension Office for information about projects that have been undertaken.
Use graphs and charts to display information. Compare Saskatchewan projects to those elsewhere. Discuss projects in terms of their entrepreneurial characteristics and their contribution to sustainable agriculture.
Alternate approaches to agriculture
Teacher background
Alternate approaches to
agriculture include:
Plants are developed, for
example desert plants and
sea rice, that can be
adapted to harsh lands.
People who have
traditionally lived in
deserts are helping
scientists discover how
their ancestors used the
desert plants. Some of the
plants will grow in
saltwater. Sea rice could
be one of the most valuable
grains in the world. Its
grain is similar to wheat
in size and nutritional
quality. It can grow in
seawater. It can also
tolerate fresh water or
drought.
Collect news articles about new approaches to agriculture. Look for examples of entrepreneurial activity. Make a portfolio.
From the field to the table
Explore issues related to food production and distribution by analyzing the steps involved in bringing a common food such as macaroni and cheese to the table.
Foodstuffs often take a complicated pathway to arrive at the table, thus increasing the price. Energy of various kinds is used to produce these foodstuffs. The more energy required, the more expensive the foodstuff.
Learn about terms such as producer, wholesaler, processor, retailer, and consumer by using them in context. Discover that the more steps involved in getting food to market, the more expensive the product may become. Reflect upon the relationship between wise shopping and the conservation of resources.
What pathway does the wheat follows in order to be made into flour and then into macaroni? Consider all the steps involved. For example who would be employed by a macaroni factory? The list includes administration staff, assembly line workers, salesmen, and janitorial staff. The point here is for students to realize that a simple, everyday product goes through many hands in a process that is likely much more complicated than students ever realized.
Trace the pathway for the cheese.
Potato Farmer Potato Wholesaler Potato chip processor 5 -----> 7 -----> 20 -----> Grocery chain Wholesaler Supermarket Consumer 25 -----> 30 -----> 50 ----->Discussion may centre around the chain that food follows to arrive at the grocery store, the big jump in the cost, the merits of buying directly from a farmer, the loss of jobs if one buys directly, and the price of junk food.
Follow up:
Women as Food Producers Use the Student Information Page: Gambia's Women Farmers.
Note: Over half of the food produced in the world is produced by women. In most cases the women cultivate crops without the help of modern machinery. The work is very difficult and the women often do this work while looking after small children.
To introduce the Information Page, write the word "farmers" on the board and brainstorm related words, recording the ideas in web format. Depending upon the responses, you may want to provide he stem: Farmers are _________. Do students associate `farmers' with `men'? Reflect on the idea that women are farmers too.
After reading the profile, locate Gambia on a map. Talk about the climate and vegetation. (If possible use a variety of maps to create a composite picture of climate, vegetation, landforms, population distribution, etc.).
Prepare a graph showing the numbers of men and women food producers.
Use the Student Information Page: Women farmers in Saskatchewan to read and discuss the profiles of Saskatchewan women.
For follow-up activities, the teacher may choose to do the following.
Agriculture (MHP, V5011)
Berry Harvesting in Saskatchewan
(MHP, V2528)
Eating Green (MHP, V8469)
Farm Machinery Dealer (MHP,
V2365)
Farm to Supermarket (MHP, V7152)
How Are Animals and People
Dependent Upon Each Other?
p.
39, Language Arts for Indian and
Métis Students
Saskatchewan
Education, Training, and
Employment, 1994.
Inventions in Agriculture (MHP,
V5130)
Irrigation Specialist (MHP,
V2366)
Let's Go Berry Picking (MHP,
V2645)
Let's Go Berrypicking! Berry
Picker's Manual
Saskatchewan
Education, Training, and
Employment, 1988
The Marvellous Prairie Mega
Machine (MHP, V2619)
Maximizing Production on
Innovative Acres
parts of People in the Forest
(wild rice growing) (MHP, V8464)
Pulse Crops of Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Past and Present
Kit:
Saskatchewan's Economy:
Agriculture - Specialization and
Interdependence.
Snack Foods (MHP, V475)
Story of Wheat (MHP, V1248)
Supermarket Survival Skills
(MHP, V1719)
Supermarket Tour (MHP, V1317)
Wild Rice Growers Training
Manual
Saskatchewan Education,
Training, and Employment,
Northern Division, 1987.
Subscribe to:
Farm Light and PowerSubscribe to:
2230 15th Avenue
Regina, Saskatchewan
S4P 1A2
Tel: 525-3305
Western Producer
Box 2500
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
S7K 3C4
Tel: 665-3500
Pigs are very smelly animals and pig farms are very smelly places. Pig farmers have been searching for a long time for a way to cut down the strong odour and so have people who live close to pig farms.
On many pig farms there is a dugout near the barn and all the waste from the barn goes into the dugout and the dugout is very smelly. Someone discovered that if you cover the dugout with straw it cuts down the smell drastically, but there was another problem. After a while the straw sank to the bottom of the dugout and the smell was back again.
What could they do to keep the straw from sinking?
From his office in La Ronge, Lynn Riese manages a business that sells wild rice to customers around the world. He started by growing wild rice and selling it to other distributors. Before long he began marketing his wild rice crop and the crops of other growers.
Getting the customers was hard work. He and his daughter attended food shows across Canada, the United States, and in Europe. He now has many customers who demand a top-of-the-line product and a high level of service. Riese makes sure that his customers get what they want.
Many of his customers phone him in the middle of the night. He has a business phone by his bed and is ready to take calls at any time on any day. He knows it is important to keep in contact with his customers and he spends many hours on the phone each day.
He knows that being successful in an international business enterprise requires a good understanding of people and their cultures. His European customers, he explains, demand the highest quality. "There's no such thing as an excuse - they expect precision."
It also requires motivation, initiative, and an ability to analyze different markets. Riese is a successful business man but he says the road would have been less bumpy with a stronger educational background. "If I were to do it over again, I would have taken marketing and bookkeeping. I had to learn through `the school of hard knocks' and that's always more expensive."
Student Information Page: Gambia's
Women
Farmers
Gambia is one of the few countries in the world where women commonly own farm land. Traditionally, providing food for the family is both a personal priority and a marital responsibility. In fact, Gambian women produce most of their country's rice, a staple food crop.
One day as a group of Gambian rice farmers were cutting their ripened crop a bulldozer came along and drove right through the harvest. Work had begun on a huge project to make Gambia more self-sufficient in rice. "It destroyed everything," exclaimed one woman. "I couldn't do anything. I just had to pray to God." Another added, "I feed and clothe my family from the rice field. The little I get now from casual labouring has to buy food for my family."
Until recently, the rice fields have been the domain of the women, where they have worked for generations without men. The work has never been easy: "We have to plough by hand. We hoe until the skin peels off our hands. We work like this because we have no machinery."
The women know what they need: a milling machine to reduce the heavy hours of pounding rice, tractors to cut the back-breaking work of ploughing, and credit. With just this much, they could maintain food self-sufficiency with a surplus for local cash sales - and have more time and energy to care for their children.
As one women explained, "When you're born, you are given land by your mother. It becomes your land.You can also get compound land from your husband, but if you marry a man who has no land to give you as your own, your mother's land is always there for you to support yourself. Even the village headman does not have the right to take that land away from you."
But, without consulting the women, the village headman in some villages leased the women's lands to the government for the project - for the next 50 years.
When land is taken from the women, the food it grows is usually sold for money. Women have little control over that money. Money can buy many things. But rice is security and food for hungry bellies.
From: Saskatchewan Valley School Division. (1987). Welcome To A World Of Plenty: A Unit Designed For Grade Six In The Welcome To Our World Project. Warman: Saskatchewan Valley School Division.
Statistics Canada's 1991 census data shows about 20% of people operating Saskatchewan farms are women. Half of them work in a partnership with a man.
The census also shows women were identified as being the main farm operator in 6% of 280,000 farms across Canada.
Obviously, farming is still viewed as being mainly a man's occupation. Women operating farms usually report some resistance from communities. They often have difficulties receiving bank loans and are often not taken seriously when negotiating business deals.
Georgina's brother Lal followed the dream and took a homestead near Lipton. He grew to hate it - his dirty mud hut, a smoky open fire for cooking, and a slough for water.
Georgina's father had given Lal some money to come to Canada and get a homestead. Now her father wanted a report on how Lal was doing on his homestead. Georgina was on her way to New York and a career in journalism. But she agreed to visit her brother first.
If Lal expected her to leave after her first mosquito bite, he was dead wrong. She loved it here. She found the prairie to be serene and inspiring. She decided to stay. She had never churned butter or milked cows before. She had never harnessed a horse or cleaned barns either. But she learned fast. For two years she helped Lal make a success of his farm.
But Georgina wanted a farm of her own. As a single woman with no children, she didn't qualify for a homestead. So she bought a farm with a half section of land in the Qu'Appelle Valley. Her brother thought she was crazy. A woman couldn't run a Canadian farm! She would be the laughing stock of the community! For the first two years she sometimes hired a man to help with the heavy work. But after two years of poor crops, she couldn't afford that and she did all the work herself.
She spent one winter in New York writing for magazines to support her farm. People were very interested in what was happening in Canada, and she had no trouble selling her articles.
She was also a journalist here in Saskatchewan. She wrote regularly for a woman's page in the Grain Growers' Guide. In her column she wrote about the unfairness of the homesteader laws. She also wrote about other laws that were unfair to women. She claimed that ordinary men are not any better at doing things than ordinary women are. It's just that they are better paid. She believed this was wrong. So did a lot of other people, both women and men.
Two newspapers, the Grain Growers' Guide and the Winnipeg Free Press supported the "homesteads for women" campaign. They started a petition which was signed by 11 000 men. In 1913, the newspapers presented the petition to the government in Ottawa. The government's answer was, "No".
Georgina did what she could for the women in her community. On her farm, she welcomed women and helped train them to be good farmers.
With her life on the farm, Georgina proved that women could be good farmers. With her writing, she worked hard to make things more fair for all Saskatchewan and Canadian women.
"You have to take a cheerful outlook on things, because if you don't you'll never make it," says the 61 year old farmer who lives a short distance from Regina.
Although she faces difficulties with a smile, Melita is a serious business woman. She has about 50 American Paint horses, about 50 head of cattle, a small flock of sheep, a few chickens, and some land that produces grain and hay. Besides that, Melita designs and creates clothing out of leather - coats, gloves, vests.
"You have to try a lot of things to make money or else I would not have made it here," she said.
A lot of people thought Clemence and her six children would not make it on the farm after her husband Murray died in a farm accident in 1977.
"I got continuous hassles from the neighbours and others who said to sell or rent out the land. It made me so mad I was determined to stay on," she said.
There were many reasons to stay. The farm had belonged to parents. She liked farming. She had confidence in herself. She knew her children wanted to stay on the land. There were just too many reasons not to give it up. But it was not always easy.
"Getting operating loans (from banks) was one of my worst nightmares," she said. "They seemed to think that women are not smart enough to handle the business end of things."
Another problem Melita has faced is men looking to buy livestock who try to pressure her into bad business deals.
Clemence has sold pure-bred American Paint colts across Western Canada, in the U.S., Italy and Germany. In the winter she ships some of her mares to a PMU line in Manitoba where the animal's urine is gathered for making estrogen used in making birth control pills.
In the 16 years that Clemence has had responsibility for the farm, things have improved. Banks are more used to dealing with independent business women. The neighbours have come around. "I guess they realize that this old girl can handle it," she jokes. "I always used to ask them how to do things and now they sometimes come to me."
Adapted with permission from The Leader-Post, Regina, Saskatchewan, March 15, 1993, page D1.
Profile: Bonnie Tweedie
Bonnie is a farmer. She farms with her husband and three young children.Bonnie was not born on a farm. She was a city girl from Saskatoon. When she was 12 years old, her family moved to a farm near Vanscoy. Did it take her long to adjust to living on the farm? She said, "About 3 days after moving, I was a farm girl! It felt right. I loved it."
She joined the Vanscoy 4H Club very shortly after moving to the farm. 4H Clubs have the motto, "Learn to do by doing." Bonnie says this is the best way to learn how to look after livestock and develop a sense of responsibility. She belonged to the 4H Club for 9 years.
When she graduated from high school, she decided she wanted to stay on the farm. She already had some cattle, but she wanted to do something different. Her neighbour raised sheep and she thought that would be a good thing for her to do too. So, at 18 years of age, she went to the bank and borrowed $2 000.00. With that money she bought some sheep.
Later, when Bonnie and her husband were married, she continued raising sheep, and her husband continued growing grain. Of course, their work often overlaps and they often help each other. But like many farm families, they each have their major responsibilities.
Looking after the sheep was often difficult when Bonnie's own children were small. Especially during lambing time. It's important to be with the ewe when the lamb is born, just to make sure everything is okay. "When they were young, my children spent a lot of time in the lambing barn," observed Bonnie. "But in a way raising young children and raising sheep go together. When I had to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning to feed my baby, I would just put on my coat and go check on the sheep too."
Bonnie has been raising sheep for about 15 years. She has about 250 sheep, including the lambs that were born between Christmas Eve and the end of January. Every year she sells some of her lambs privately and has a local abattoir cut and wrap the pieces the way the customer wants them. She also sells registered stock to other farmers for breeding. Every year she shows some sheep and lambs at the Western Canadian Agribition in Regina as well as at other exhibitions across the country.
Every year in early spring, the sheep are shorn. Bonnie hires a professional shearer who usually comes with an assistant. Of course, Bonnie and her husband help too. Bonnie sells some of the wool to local spinners and weavers. She sells most of it to companies in eastern Canada. Some of the wool is then sold in Canada, and some is exported to different countries.
Sheep seem to do well in the Saskatchewan climate. They don't seem to mind the cold. As long as there are some shelters for them, they can be outside even when the temperature is -35 C0.
According to Bonnie, women and children and sheep are a good combination. Although sheep can be very stubborn, they are small, gentle and manageable. They seem to respond well to the gentle handling by women and children.
It seems like there are more and more women farming. But women have been always taken an active role in farming, even during pioneer times. Although the land had to registered in the man's name, the woman always did much of the work, and often took charge of part of the operation. The woman would often raise chickens or turkeys. She would usually plant, care for, and harvest the garden that was so important for the family's winter food supply. She would usually take charge of caring for the children. What could be more important than that? Perhaps it's just that people are finally recognizing that the work women do on the farm is just as important as the work that men do. And it's when women and men work together, learn from each other, and support one another that the farm work gets done the best.
Print these statements on task cards. Your teacher will give you directions on what to do with them.