One of the things that Stacy and I try to always leave with our audiences is how important it is to look for everyday opportunities to promote and educate the public about agriculture and modern food production.  Many times we are already engaged in acitvities that we can incorporate the positive story of agriculture into.  Recently, our family has started doing some geocaching and I think there are some great possibilities for people to learn about ag while enjoying this modern day treasure hunt. 

For those of you that don't know, geocaching is a game where you use a GPS device to locate hidden "treasures".  There are hundreds of thousands of geocaches hidden all over the world.  The coordinates for each of them is listed on the internet.  By putting these coordinates into your GPS device, it will lead you to them.  Some geocachers have described it as using multi-billion dollar military technology to find tupperware in the woods.  While it may sound corny on the surface, it's actually a lot of fun for the entire family. 

Some times the geocaches are placed near historical sites and include a description of what happened there.  After visiting a few of these I started thinking that we could do this to teach people about agriculture.  so here is my plan.  I am going to place a geocache along a fenceline and just off the highway that cuts through our ranch.  In it i am going to place information that explains what we do on the ranch and what they are looking at from where they stand. 

You can find our more about geocaching at geocaching.com.  You have to register to use the site, but it's free and doesn't take very long.  If you place a geocache about agriculture, please let me know.  I would like to keep track of these 'agricaches' to see how many get placed.  This way if we travel near your area, we can check it out as well. 

As soon as I get our first agricache placed, I will list the coordinates here.