The catastrophic events of the Dust Bowl were probably the accumulation of multiple factors. Each one of those has been addressed in a different way and I don't know if they will be totally effective but I think we have made good strides.

There is a huge ethnic market. The increase in the ethnic market for goats has been due to the increase of immigrants coming from places where goat meat was the primary meat staple. The other primary meat staple from most of these areas was sheep. So the ethnic demand has increased there, too. There's more growth (in sheep) because the sheep industry started out smaller (than goats) so it's been a more rapid growth, a kind of a catch up situation.

Troy used to offer a program on insects. This year he's talking about dirt.

This is really great exposure to agriculture for most of these kids. There are not as many kids growing up on a farm as there used to be. Coming here gives them the opportunity to see the animals up close and learn how much agriculture affects their daily lives.

Tillage is now greatly reduced. Multiple passes of equipment has been reduced, sometimes to just one pass. And there is also the no-till method.

That's mainly due to a change in the nature of agriculture and farming practices. But we've noticed the numbers have risen in the last couple of years.