Always doing more with less, agriculture has become three times more efficient over the last 70 years, reducing labor and inputs while raising more food, feed, and fuel. As a result, fewer kids are raised on farms and lack a first-hand connection to agriculture. Missouri Farmers Care’s Agriculture Education on the Move™ (Ag Moves) builds bridges between elementary students and the agriculture in their lives.

Ag Moves educator Kelly Nisbett knows agriculture inside and out from years of hands-on experience. Kelly builds connections with hundreds of mid-Missouri elementary students each year as they discover the excitement of learning about agriculture. Kelly shares her lifetime of experiences in plant science, animal husbandry, floristry, and entrepreneurship when she visits classrooms to teach ten hands-on, STEM-focused agriculture lessons.

‘Work of Heart’

“I just love the kids! They make me smile and laugh,” Kelly says. “Since I am self-employed, I spend a lot of time by myself. Just having the kids to hang out with is refreshing.” For Kelly, Ag Moves is more than just agricultural literacy and how agriculture is entwined in everyday life, it is a ‘work of heart’, too.

“My students make me feel great about myself, pointing out how smart I am!” Kelly chuckles. “They are always saying or doing something that has me cackling along with them. I connect with them by being so silly that we are laughing by the end of a class. Students will come out of their shells to have fun and laugh.”

Ag Literacy POV

Kelly became an Ag Moves educator in 2014. She reflects  on how agriculture knowledge and understanding in elementary students has changed over the last decade     .      

“Students today are more      disconnected from their food. The first class I taught recognized more about agriculture than my students do today,” Kelly says. “I love it when the kids have ‘a-ha’ moments. I consistently have students who learn that the chicken we eat comes from the birds that they see,” Kelly says.

She believes in the proactive impact of Ag Moves. “Ag Moves is wonderful because it teaches things that a lot of people don’t think about anymore. Classroom teachers say to me, ‘I didn’t know that!’ Each Ag Moves lesson has great visuals and if I repeat lessons with students, the reinforcement makes a big difference.”

Kelly’s Impact

Kelly’s agriculture background, love for kids, and flexible schedule made her an excellent fit to teach Ag Moves in the #Agri-Ready Designated Phelps County area. She started teaching in two classrooms at Rolla public schools but quickly reached out to other schools to expand her impact. As her enrollments grew, schools began reaching out to her. Kelly teaches nearly 400 students each fall semester at Rolla, Newburg, Edgar Springs, Vienna, St. James, and St. Patrick Catholic schools.

More About Kelly

Kelly earned a plant sciences degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She shepherds Katahdin sheep and is a responsible, self-proclaimed ‘dog addict’ on a small farm with her husband, Japheth, and owns Memory Lane Floral and Events, a floristry business. She enjoys helping with her family’s beef cattle and the time she invests as an Ag Moves educator adds consistency to her schedule. Kelly is a lifetime 4-H member, a program of University of Missouri Extension, and her six-year-old son, Velton, is the song leader for the Evening Star 4-H Club in St. James.

Ag Moves is a series of ten, STEM-focused, hands-on lessons that explore crops, livestock, soil and water conservation, nutrition, and careers in agriculture. The lessons align with Missouri state learning objectives in science, math, social studies, and language arts and show students how agriculture is entwined in their daily lives.

Thanks to the dedication and drive of professional educators, collegiate interns, and 836 FFA partner educators, Ag Moves engaged over 12,400 third-grade students in 2024. The Missouri Farmers Care Foundation, which hosts Ag Moves, supplies curriculum, materials, and trained educators at no cost to participating schools. A list of elementary schools receiving Ag Moves programming in the fall of 2024 can be found here.

Ag Moves is hosted and funded by Missouri Farmers Care and its Foundation, a coalition of over 40 agriculture groups in Missouri. Support comes from Missouri soybean farmers and their checkoff, as well as the MFA Oil Foundation, FCS Financial, MFA Incorporated, Missouri Corn Merchandising Council, the Missouri Beef Industry Council, and the Missouri Fertilizer Control Board. To learn more or to become a funding partner, visit www.agmoves.com.