Oct. 5--VALMEYER -- Inside Valmeyer High, your nose will lead you to Howard Heavner's agriculture classroom.

Follow the fishy smell, and you'll find yourself in a giant room with concrete, rectangular "raceways" teeming with tilapia and bass, multiple wall aquariums full of fingerlings, and enormous water and oxygen tanks that keep the whole operation humming.

In this high school of about 150 students, roughly 50 students each year help with the booming farm operations.

There are 18 production tanks, where thousands of tilapia grow to be shipped anywhere from Connecticut to California.

In the school's greenhouses neat rows of poinsettias await holiday shoppers, and dozens of potted bright mums are outside for fall.

Adjacent to the school are the tangled vines where students are learning the tricky task of grape-growing.

"It's hard to make it on corn and soybeans anymore," said Heavner, who also serves as Valmeyer's mayor. "We want to teach these kids other ways, ways they can make a secondary income."

Fish farms, vineyards, greenhouses, veterinary programs -- all are becoming more common as enrollment in agriculture programs grows. Missouri's enrollment in agriculture programs is 25,000 students, an all-time high, said Terry Heiman, director of agricultural education for the state's education department. In Illinois, enrollment is about 26,000 and has been growing steadily for 10 years, Future Farmers of America officials said.

Students who might not have been attracted by "cows and plows" are intrigued by the idea of careers in food science, urban forestry or conservation, Heiman said.

And high schools are seeking to fill those niches.

Students in Missouri's Union School District in Franklin County are nursing injured animals that were victims of Hurricane Katrina. A new teacher at Clyde C. Miller Academy in St. Louis is starting a biotechnology program. And students at Clopton High in the Clarksville School District have collected herbs, such as ginseng, and sold them, Heiman said.

Heavner's ag program is following farming trends in Illinois, where vineyards and fish farms have popped up statewide. Heavner's students often fill orders for other high schools that want to fill a tank or two, raise the fish for a year and then cook them for a school fish fry or banquet.

Valmeyer's fish and greenhouse production is self-sufficient and starting to turn a profit. Proceeds helped pay for new computers a few years ago. And when students work a "sale day" marketing their mums or a tasty filet of tilapia, they keep part of the sale.

"I think that's why we like it," said Andrew Heavner, a junior and the teacher's son. "Kids like being able to make some money. And it's different. It's not just sitting in class listening to a lecture."

Learning is involved, though. Students spend weeks learning how to control the fish environment or how best to grow grapes and other plants.

It's a year-round lesson for Andrew, who often comes to school in summer to feed the fish and check on the tanks; another student is paid to take care of the plants. Once school starts and Heavner's classes fill, the fish have ample caretakers.

Andrew keeps cologne and a clean T-shirt in his locker in case the fish care makes him too stinky to return to other classes.

On one recent day, four students were packaging 100 tilapia to send to Marissa High, where the fish will be grown to eat this spring.

The fish wriggled and writhed as boys dipped their nets in the water and then dumped the tilapia into a barrel.

They were loaded on a truck and sent to Marissa. Cross-country deliveries, however, require more careful packaging in oxygen-filled plastic bags.

"A lot of kids think at first that FFA and ag is just farming, a bunch of corn and steers," Andrew said. "But there are a lot of things you can learn. I don't know what I'm going to do yet. But this is definitely something I'll consider."