Stockyards Ag Experience

By Abby Bischoff, Executive Director of the Stockyards Ag Experience

Top: Guests enjoy the play kitchen at Stockyards Ag Experience.; Bottom Left: Guests pretend to haul soybeans to town as they ride in the big blue truck.; Bottom Right: Guest shops the play grocery store at Stockyards Ag Experience.

Since 2017, the Stockyards Ag Experience has been entertaining and educating Falls Park visitors about where their food comes from. Through hands-on, interactive exhibits, we tell the history of the Sioux Falls Stockyards and the future of agriculture in the region.

While our upper-level covers Stockyards history, the lower level is where kids and families learn about modern farming practices while scanning food in our play grocery store and kitchen or pretending to haul soybeans to town in our big blue truck.

At the beginning of the farm-to-table exhibit, we meet three producers who tell us their story and explain the crops and livestock they raise. Farmer Steve introduces himself as a farmer who focuses on row crops – including soybeans!

Each of the three commodities we focus on have their own interactive area. Visitors are encouraged to use our maze puzzle to see how far soybeans travel to get to their final destination – whether in biofuels or on your kitchen table.

Visitors can also see a display of soybean byproducts – edible and nonedible items. Crayons, candy bars, soy milk and a lot of other products get some help from the versatile soybean! The byproduct displays are always eye-opening learning tools. We love hearing visitors tell us things like “I never knew that about soybeans before!”

The soybean display also features full-color graphics with additional facts and points of interest regarding soybean production.

Besides the area dedicated to soybeans, the farm-to-table exhibit shows some broader efforts that soybean producers participate in. One exhibit relevant to current consumer concern is our sustainability quiz. Guests can play an A/B quiz that informs folks on modern sustainability efforts. As consumer interest in the origins of their food increases, we aim to host those discussions right here in the Stockyards Ag Experience Museum.

Everyone from the mayor of Sioux Falls to the Governor of South Dakota has taken a “ride” in our big blue grain truck. Transportation is an important part of the food chain conversation, and our farm truck absolutely gets that conversation started.

Our most popular exhibit is our hands-on grocery store and kitchen. This area has visitors taking finished food products, scanning them (each item has a barcode), and learning a fact

about each item. Several bottles of salad dressing are a part of the kitchen display and often have soybean oil in them. If you scan the bottle of ranch in our kitchen, you learn that “Salad dressings were on the market as early as the 1920s.”

Since our opening, we have shared the story of agriculture with more than 10,000 people from 49 states and 26 foreign countries. We hope you will stop by and visit us soon.

Stockyards Ag Experience 301 E Falls Park Dr Sioux Falls, SD 57104 (605) 332-1917 stockyardsagexperience.org

Guests read the board describing “Where Soybeans Go” This picture shows the Play Grocery Store at Stockyards Ag Experience where guests can “shop” and “scan” the products and learn facts about how soybeans play a part in manufacturing each item.

Display board that features soybean facts

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So take a load off in your favorite chair and learn about how First Dakota became the first Preferred Lender in the country with Farm Service Agency in 1999. We’ll keep working, even when your feet are up.