More than 25 years ago, Don Minto, who operates Watson Farm, needed some help getting his baled hay into his barn. He was driving through town when he spotted a teenage kid mowing lawns.

He stopped, and asked him if he wanted to make a couple of dollars “throwing bales.” That boy is now a 40-year-old man, owns a farm in Coventry and says that he left Watson Farm that day knowing that he wanted to work outdoors and that farming would always be a part of his life.

A couple of weeks ago, the fifth-grade class at the Lawn Avenue School visited the Jamestown Community Farm. The purpose of the visit was to do a little work at the farm and, more importantly, to expose the students to local farming.

If you are older than 60, you probably grew up with a grandfather, grandmother, uncle or aunt that lived on a farm. Through the formative years of your childhood, your parents more than likely packed you in the back seat of the car and hauled you off for a visit to see grandpa at the farm.

Fifth-grade students from the Lawn Avenue School recently visited the Community Farm in Jamestown, where they learned about the importance of local agriculture. As an older teenager, you may have worked summers on the farm. As your youthful years passed and you felt increasingly pressured to act and think like an adult, the accumulation of these childhood visits left you some idea of how farms worked and where your food came from.

Today, however, fewer than three percent of this country’s population lives on farms. Most likely, children grow up with no family visits to the farm and little – if any – exposure to, or understanding of, farm life or the purpose of local agriculture.

Believe it or not, not every young person who finds himself increasingly pressured to think and act like an adult looks forward to a working career that involves commuting up Route 95 to a stuffy offi ce with a tiny work cubicle, staring at a computer screen. It’s not that there are not great opportunities, challenges and rewards to a professional, white-collar working career, it is just that it is not everybody’s “cup of tea.”

Kids have to be exposed to alternatives if they are going to make legitimate choices. In their excellent new book, “A Nation of Farmers,” authors Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton discuss in depth the destruction to the natural environment caused by our modern industrial farming techniques and the increasing failure of this global farming model to meet the needs of our world. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that worldwide, 1.02 billion people “suffer from hunger.”

Astyk and Newton argue that the only way to confront the serious food shortages of the near future and to make significant improvements to the natural environment is to once again become a nation of farmers.

Schools and universities are beginning to recognize this problem and are offering more educational opportunities directly related to growing food locally. Universities are starting to offer major courses of study in sustainable agriculture. Secondary and elementary schools are finding ways to integrate agricultural understanding into their curriculums. The “Kids Grow” program is an excellent example of this.

In Jamestown, there are nine working farms within a threemile radius of the two Jamestown schools. The nine farmers have formally expressed a willingness to the school department to make the resources of these farms available to the schools.

The 48 fifth-graders who visited the Jamestown Community Farm a couple of weeks ago are between 10 and 11 years old. During their working careers and by the time they are 50, the population of the world will increase approximately 50% to more than nine billion inhabitants.

Much of this population growth will occur in countries that cannot feed their people in 2010. How we all eat is going to become a bigger and bigger problem for all of us and we should find ways to focus young minds on the problem. We should get our children prepared to participate and to lead. As one fifth-grade boy said as he was leaving the Community Farm, “This farming is kind of fun.”

Out Standing in the Field

The fifth-grade students who came to the Community Farm a couple of weeks ago were accompanied by their teachers and staff. All teachers and staff – including the bus driver – participated in the activities and were an enthusiastic and positive part of the time at the farm.

They participated and encouraged the kids and – when necessary – provided that teacher-type discipline that only teachers know how to do. We should have great respect for the skills, professionalism and enthusiasm of our teachers and supporting staff, and recognize all of them as outstanding in their field.

What’s available in Jamestown

Dutra Farm: Hay, 662-5686.

Hodgkiss Farm: Early summer vegetables at the stand, 423- 0641.

Watson Farm: Grass-fed Red Devon beef, lamb, Conanicut Island and Rhody Warm wool blankets, Thursdays, 3 to 6 p.m.

Windmist Farm: Grass-fed beef products, eggs, Fridays, 3 to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.