Farmpedia: the reference toolbox for teaching animal husbandry in general education
Résumé
In the secondary schools of France, mention of agriculture is very poor and even more for livestock production. When these topics are covered in classroom, it’s mainly based on the textbooks which often propose biased debates, misinformation and/or unsourced knowledge. Animal husbandry is mainly described as having a high energetic cost and a strong negative impact on climate. As secondary school students will be the citizens of tomorrow and education is still and will continue being an important source of information it seemed relevant to provide their teachers with appropriate teaching resources to deal with livestock production. For this reason, we have created Farmpedia, a reference toolbox to talk about animal husbandry in the classrooms. It contains all the scientific information needed to prepare lessons, popularised for a non-expert public, with the sources of each piece of information clearly referenced. An entire section is dedicated to the study of the links between animal husbandry and environment. Farmpedia was created by a working group composed mainly by major agronomic and veterinary universities professors and researchers, and validated by experts in the topics presented. The idea was that specialised professors should support generalist teachers. In order to make Farmpedia accessible to all, a dedicated website has been created. On www.ressources-elevages.fr, teachers or even curious citizens wishing to learn more will find the Farmpedia tool but also a selection of various teaching resources to be re-used in class. Disseminating the site to reach the target audience is our biggest challenge now: to do this, we are working on strengthening our partnerships with general education institutions.