Mid-Prairie FCCLA and FFA students experienced an agricultural adventure earlier this month as they experienced a Farm-to-Fork event at Brenneman Pork.

The event was organized by FFA advisor Elsa Schmidt and FCCLA advisors Sarah O’Rourke and Glenda Seward.

On April 2nd, students toured the Brenneman Pork facility, an experience which Schmidt said was a rare opportunity, “Most packing plants don’t allow tours, even most lockers [don’t]. It’s just not always an easy place to get to see, and we were able to provide that view of the fabrication right in front of [the students].”

Following the tour, students heard a presentation from Dr. Terry Houser, an Associate Professor of Animal Science at Iowa State University who works in ISU’s meat lab, in which he taught students about butchery. Afterwards, students prepared various pork dishes in the Mid-Prairie High School Culinary lab, learning about the final steps to put the food onto their plates.

O’Rourke said the event gave students a chance to see things from a new perspective, “Just seeing things big picture, whether that is how we have a pork chop on our plate or any other thing start to finish. Big picture ‘How does this happen?’ allowing them to think critically about how connected we all are, and our tasks and our professions are, especially in rural economies.”

This was the first year of the event, but the organizers said they hoped to make it an annual occurrence rotating between different aspects of the agriculture industry, with their initial proposal being a rotation of pork, poultry, beef and dairy production.