The Effects of a Culturally Responsive, Nutrition-based Agricultural Literacy Program on Latino Youths’ Knowledge and Behaviors

Agriculture and nutrition are tightly intertwined as each relies heavily on the other to support food systems and the consumers it feeds. The influx of urbanization in the nation’s communities has inherently triggered a divide between youth and the farm-to-fork process. This is made apparent by the average American lacking adequate agricultural literacy levels. Concurrently, an insidious health problem, childhood obesity, is predominant among America’s youth. Moreover, there is a higher prevalence of this health problem among Latinos. One way to combat the obesity crisis is to improve youths’ understanding of the interconnection of nutrition and agriculture through educational programming. Through the lenses of culturally responsive pedagogy and social cognitive theory, the researchers employed a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of culturally responsive agricultural literacy lessons on Latino youths’ agricultural literacy and nutrition (attitudes and behaviors). The treatment group received the culturally responsive curriculum. Both pre and posttest data (N = 98) were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. Regardless of intervention, the agricultural literacy levels of youth increased from pre- to post-test which supports the positive impact of youth engaging with a nutrition-based, agricultural literacy curriculum. The novelty of this research is the valuable insight to scholars within the agricultural literacy field as there are few empirical studies on culturally responsive agriculture literacy curriculum. Findings underscore the importance of providing an environment for youth to interact with their culture while engaging in curriculum that connects agricultural literacy to their nutritional behaviors