Annual Week-Long Teacher Tour Goes Virtual

Tiffany Selchow, Director of Social Marketing and Consumer Outreach | August 10, 2020
Best Seat in the House

SAI teacher participants virtually visited the Quarter Circle U Ranch as one of the educational tour "stops" on the 2020 Virtual Academy.

There are few silver linings to the COVID-19 cloud. However, this year more Arizona teachers were reached with important beef and agricultural messages when the Arizona Summer Agriculture Institute went virtual. Typically, a maximum of 30 teachers are able to go on the week-long tour; this year five days of virtual tours and presentations replaced the bus trip, and 218 educators participated in the event, with an average daily attendance of up to 200. 

The event is a coordinated effort between Arizona’s agriculture education groups, including the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension and Maricopa Agriculture Center, Arizona Beef Council, Arizona Farm Bureau Federation, Arizona Milk Producers, Arizona State Cowbelles, and the Arizona Departments of Education and Agriculture. Support is also provided by the Arizona Foundation for Agriculture Literacy.  

Fourteen presenters from a variety of agriculture operations, from beef ranchers to beekeepers, from dairy farmers to lavender and rose farms, were able to reach out to the mostly K-12 educators. Collectively, the participants reach nearly 28,000 students per year. 

In a post-institute survey 82 percent of participants said they are likely or very likely to incorporate information from the cattle and beef portions of the virtual tours and information presented into their curriculum.    


This would have been the 30th anniversary of the in-person educator tour of Arizona Agriculture. The 2020 virtual tour was held June 8-12. To learn more about SAI and agricultural literacy efforts in Arizona, visit www.azagfoundation.org. 

Arizona rancher Chuck Backus, Quarter Circle U Ranch, presents to teachers virtually during the 2020 Summer Ag Institute Virtual Academy.

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About the Beef Checkoff Program 
The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States may retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA Approval.   
About the Arizona Beef Council 
The Arizona Beef Council is a non-profit organization served by a nine-member board of directors representing cattle growers, cattle feeders, and dairy farmers, and are appointed by the Governor of Arizona. These volunteers oversee Arizona’s beef checkoff and checkoff-funded programs.