Tori O’Neal, BAF Food Technologist – Service Day

Tori O’Neal, BAF Food Technologist, recently took advantage of our Service Day program and split her time between two events, in Idaho’s Custer and Lemhi counties, teaching local kids about potatoes and food manufacturing.

On March 23, Tori spent the afternoon joining the Custer Soil and Water Conservation District’s annual Ag Week festivities. She talked to a group of area homeschool kids about potatoes, their importance to Idaho agriculture, and the many ways potatoes make it to our plates. They did an exercise on specific gravity and solids in potatoes to see how potatoes change over storage.

On May 18, Tori joined the Lemhi County Extension Agent on a trip to Salmon School Garden in Salmon, ID, and talked to 2nd and 4th-grade students about potatoes and working in food research and development. Every year, each class (K-8th grade) is responsible for one crop in the garden. The 2nd and 4th-grade students planted potatoes. They kicked things off with a “consumer survey” on how each class liked their potatoes prepared the best; mashed held its own against fries, and potato salad got audible “ewws.” Next, they talked about how someone working in R&D would use consumer information to do their job and make millions of pounds of those different types of potatoes.

Thank you, Tori, for living our Make Things Better value and sharing your knowledge and passion about your work with the community!