Rapper Farmer Brown teaches kids about gardening

Kentucky State University agriculture, food, and environment student and farm technician Trevor Claiborn created Farmer Brown as a way to teach children about agriculture. Photo by Blair Hess, Kentucky State University.

By Beverly Fortune
Lexington Herald Tribune
Feb 3, 2017

Excerpt:

The idea for Farmer Brown was sparked at the family dinner table when Claiborn tried to engage his young niece in conversation. They were eating hamburgers, and he asked her where she thought hamburgers came from.

“A tree,” she answered.

“Research shows most families are three generations away from the farm, away from knowing how food is raised,” Claiborn said.

And not just city children have that information gap.

“A lot of kids in rural areas aren’t any more connected to agriculture and farming and knowing where our food comes from than inner city kids,” he said.

Encouraged by his KSU professor Charlie Collins, Claiborn used his talent for music and rhyming in a research project to create Farmer Brown, who raps about everything from planting seeds and fertilizer, to his overall love of agriculture.

“I’m Farmer Brown, And I work the ground. And I love my farm,” the lyrics state.

His target audience is elementary through high school students. He wants to reach all youngsters, but especially those in the inner city and minorities, with the message about growing food, raising farm animals and the inter-connectedness of air, water and soil in agriculture.

Read the complete article here.