Agriculture is one of Kentucky's leading industries, regularly generating between 40 and $50 million for the state's economy.

Well, this week, the Department of Agriculture is exposing students from across the state to farming heavy machinery, livestock and more, and showing them how they can be involved in this crucial industry, whether they live on a farm or not.

Here's more in tonight's Education Matters.

Down goes by.

This is AG Education Week.

All in for education week.

It's a partnership between the Department of Agriculture, the lieutenant governor's Office and the Department of Education to increase access to agriculture education across the entire state of Kentucky.

And we're doing the entire kickoff kickoff of the entire week centered around agriculture, education and including farm safety, as well into that.

So we're going to have a safety demonstration here with more than 650 students all across Jessamine County.

They're coming right here to learn about farm safety.

And we're going to host a press conference, do a whole lot of really amazing things with our first responders here in Ashland County.

And then we're going to move into safety demonstrations.

There are more than 25 different stations here.

So that students can learn about agriculture, education and farm safety.

As Commissioner of Agriculture, I feel like, a lot of times I'm the voice for rural.

Kentucky's a farming community.

And so making sure that that voice is heard and working in partnerships to ensure that we're getting our best foot forward.

And so educating these kids about where their food comes from, the importance of agriculture.

It's one of the most important parts of this job, and we're now leading the nation in education and we're grateful for that.

One of the things that makes agriculture unique is a lot of times you're working with heavy machinery, but sometimes you're also working with tools like ATVs and our kids that are in fifth grade, they're getting ready to go into those different activities, potentially on farms or just, you know, even on farms, working with ATVs and having fun with them.

So we want to make sure that our students, who are our future leaders, also agricultural leaders, have an opportunity to learn how to be safer on ATVs.

We have larger equipment here, so some of our students have never seen large pieces of equipment before or worked with them.

So we're excited for them to get hands on with those pieces of equipment.

We have some animal demonstrations and then we also have our mobile science activity centers here.

That's a part of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

I'm really excited for the kids that have never lived on a farm and have never been a part of that work, because this is going to create the kind of exposure for them that can open up new doors of opportunity for careers.

It'll help them better understand how we're going to feed a growing world.

And we need their help in doing that.

It's like I said today, you know, we we need their help to solve challenges that we don't even know yet.

And so, every chance we can get them, you know, out of the classroom and into a field and get their hands dirty is more they're going to learn and experience and retain because it's that hands on learning.

This is just the kickoff for just getting started.

We have a full week and we tour the entire state during the week.

So we're going to start here in Jessamine County.

But then we'll have a western Kentucky day and Eastern Kentucky day, a Northern Kentucky day.

We're going everywhere because we're promoting agriculture, education and farm safety across this entire state.

This spring, 95% of counties participated in Agriculture Education Week in some way.

And the Department of AG says it's pushing for 100% this fall.