The primary topics of agricultural curricula in area schools used to be livestock management and crop growth, but nowadays students are spending less time in the field and pen.

Farm classes remain, but are rapidly being replaced by more retail-oriented seminars like floral design and greenhouse management, Pat Dixon, an agriculture teacher at Columbia High School in Nampa, told the Idaho Press Tribune.

"There's pressure for us to go more urban," she said.

Dixon recently added classes in golf course maintenance and home landscaping, topics more suited for suburban sprawl than sprawling ranges.

Idaho was late to adopt the shift, educators say. Schools in the Boise area began retooling their agriculture curricula in the late 1990s, about a decade behind most schools in the country.

Agricultural teachers "realized that if they wanted to remain viable, they had to change their outlook," said Lori Harrison, who has taught agriculture at Homedale High School for the past three years.

While in school, Harrison took classes on barn building and fence mending. A generation later, she teaches students home repairs and skills "they might learn in a Home Depot workshop."

Some old-school agriculture teachers are learning the new course topics for the first time, alongside the students.

"The learning curve from teaching animal science to teaching greenhouse management was pretty steep," said John Davis, a Vallivue agriculture teacher who retired last year after nearly 30 years of teaching.

Davis said just 1 percent of students in last year's class lived on a farm.

Still, some teachers are begrudgingly adapting to the changing urban landscape. Harley Wilson, an 11-year agriculture teacher at Middleton High School, said he will teach students the social effects of the disappearing farm.

"Agriculture is the only thing in the world that makes something from nothing. We're covering the land with cement parking lots. That land's never going to produce anything again," he added. "It's absolutely my goal to teach them and to show them what's happening."

While Harrison - eventually - became an ace floral designer and now teachers the revamped offerings, she said she still mourns for the loss of farmland.

"Many students are not able to return to the family farm," she said. "And that's the sad reality many farm kids face.'