THE AGVENTURES! LEARNING CENTER and Antique Farm Equipment Museum will be open to World Ag Expo attendees each day of the show, providing an interactive and engaging glimpse into the richest farming region in the world. Both facilities are housed at the Heritage Complex on the International Agri-Center grounds and included in the price of World Ag Expo admission.

AgVentures! each year hosts more than 10,000 school children from throughout the Central Valley. Interactive learning exhibits are professionally designed to demonstrate how food and fiber are produced and the valuable resources that support agricultural production. Another 15,000 visitors annually tour the Learning Center’s multi-sensory exhibits, many during the three-day World Ag Expo.

“One of our main goals is to provide a hands-on learning experience to complement what the children are learning in the classroom,” says AgVentures! Coordinator Katy Young.

For many visiting students, AgVentures! provides their first hands-on exposure to agriculture or farm life. Displays and lessons are designed to complement core curricula in science, social studies, math and other areas.

Instead of simply reading in a textbook that milk comes from a dairy, students can actually simulate the experience of milking on a true-to-life model of a dairy cow. The virtual tractor tour places visitors on a tractor seat for a virtual tour around a working farm. And the irrigation exhibit actually shows how and why various irrigation systems deliver water and nutrients to growing crops.

The newly redesigned AgVentures! Learning Center also features several new high quality exhibits thanks to the hard work of countless volunteers and industry support from leading Central Valley agribusinesses, included Bank of America, Sun-Maid Growers of California and San Joaquin Valley Dairy Supply.

The Antique Farm Equipment Museum is also housed at the Heritage Complex and is open to farm show attendees. The museum pays tribute to generations of California farmers, ranchers and dairy producers by providing a timeline of agriculture’s heritage through the technologies that helped the fertile valley bloom.

Young says the museum provides a year-round display for equipment rolled out during the annual Antique Farm Equipment Show held at the International Agri-Center in Tulare.

“The idea was to develop a museum that was open throughout the year, where we could display these tractors — many of them on loan from local volunteers — rather than just roll them out of the barn or shed once a year for the Antique Farm Equipment Show,” she says.

The museum showcases fully restored antique tractors, implements and other equipment, tracing the history of agricultural equipment from horse-drawn to steam engine to the diesel-powered tools of today.