The Future Farmers of America, or FFA for short, is a club that many might not know about. The FFA here at Harding is fairly new, having only started last year during September of 2022, thanks to Brenna Loxley.
However FFA is bigger then Harding, it’s history dating back to 1917 with the establishment of the Smith-Hughes Act. Afterwards in 1925, Virginia Tech started “The Future Farmers of Virginia” for boys in agriculture classes, which eventually was the groundwork for Future Farmers of America (FFA) which had come to be established in 1928. In 1969, girls were also welcome into the organization. Due to wanting to be inclusive in the agricultural world, in 1988 the name was changed to “The National FFA Organization”, which continues to grow even today.
Unlike other clubs, the FFA is a course specific organization, and requires you to take one or more specific classes, those classes are: Agriculture Food and Natural Resources (AFnR), Animal and Plant Science, and Greenhouse and Nursery Management. Eventually, Ms. Loxley hopes to add Agricultural business.
There’s also plenty of activities that the FFA gets involved with, a number of competitions in the classroom and at official FFA events that are held. One of these contests is job interviewing, which is both done in the class and as a FFA official competition. “I take students to contests to compete in the county and then our district and state levels. We also have conferences and conventions students can go to, and a lot of what we do has to deal with career development and leadership building.” Say’s Loxley
Some of you might be wondering why the FFA is a course specific organization, “Thats actually an Ohio department of education thing and like a national FFA organization thing” said Loxley.
The FFA helps students build leadership skills, career building, and sometimes even figuring out where you wish to go with your future. The FFA can also help teach how to hold and run meetings. The FFA here at Harding also loves to participate in community service, because another big aspect of the organization is helping others. The FFA also has a motto: “Learning to do, doing to earn, earning to live, and living to serve”
Loxley also says that if you have any questions you should see her. Unfortunately the date for class changes has passed, but there’s always next year!
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