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We had THE best speaker for 7-8th grade today. It was someone I got connected with through the Croplife Ambassador program (the same organization of the previous Ag speaker who was a little dry). He is from Ohio, so we tuned him in remotely. 

Such an awesome guy. He talked about interesting things, but he seems to be just an engaging speaker. (He works as a sales manager for an ag company and also teaches a college level class in their ag economy department). I can tell he's a teacher; he called on individual students and seemed to be very comfortable talking to a group of people remotely. 

The 7-8th graders asked great questions and he answered them very thoroughly. I learned things too! He went over some slides generated by the Croplife program talking about how the world population is rising and we need to feed more people on fewer acres. He supplemented his talk with questions for my students about their lives and how they could be involved in the ag industry without being farmers. 

He also talked about GMOs/organic food, how insecticides affect pollinators and what the ag industry is doing to protect pollinators, and how tiling works (a student's question). And he gave them some advice when thinking about college. My biggest takeaway from that was 'take teachers, not classes'. He said he learned the most from specific teachers instead of course content, so if you find a teacher you like, stick with him/her. Good advice, and very true. 

Our balloon prize for the day was to read outside, but I forgot and it was kind of rainy so we're saving that for another day.