Senator O'Mara joins students at Gardner Road Elementary School to celebrate Agricultural Literacy Week: Annual celebration seeks to raise awareness of the importance of farming and agriculture

Horseheads, N.Y., March 22—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C,I-Big Flats) today volunteered as a Guest Reader at the Gardner Road Elementary School in Horseheads as part of the school’s celebration of Agricultural Literacy Week.

“I truly enjoyed this opportunity to volunteer as a guest reader and help spread the word about the importance of agriculture and farming to these young students.  They were great listeners and we’re hopeful that this literacy week will help raise the awareness of agriculture and farming as a mainstay of New York State’s culture and economy,” said O’Mara, a longtime agricultural advocate in the Legislature who has served as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

O’Mara visited the classrooms of Gardner Road teachers Christine Lawas and Michaelle Tillinghast.

Agricultural Literacy Week (March 18-22), sponsored by New York Agriculture in the Classroom, is a weeklong event to help celebrate and raise awareness of the contributions of New York State’s family farmers and the state’s entire, nationally leading agricultural industry.

This year’s featured book is On the Farm, At the Market, written and illustrated by G. Brian Karas.  According to New York Agriculture in the Classroom, this year’s book “displays the unique markets and diversity that encompasses many aspects of New York's agriculture” and takes students “on the journey to local rural, suburban, and urban farmers' markets seeing a strong, interconnected community by following the food production and sales processes of three different farms.”