It has 507,763 members in 7,439 chapters across the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Some 1,200 reside in on our state. The national organization's been around since 1928, when 33 young men met in a Kansas City hotel to "chart a course for the future."It turned out to be a good chart. And the right course.
Twenty-five years later, the U.S. Post Office issued a silver anniversary stamp commemorating the organization and President Eisenhower spoke at its annual convention. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and George H. W. Bush followed suit; and in 1998 Ronald Reagan did the same via a pre-recorded message. The convention continues to draw a crowd. Last year's set an attendance record of 53,631.
Not bad for the brainchild of Midwest farm boys; and, surprisingly, getting better. The National FFA Organization (n?e Future Farmers of America), of which we speak, announced recently that its membership has hit a 31-year high.
How can that be?
FFA is among the first to acknowledge the changing agricultural landscape. Since its last high-water membership mark in 1976-1977, the percentage of FFA members whose families live on farms has decreased, creating a new FFA profile. Today, 27 percent of the group's members live on farms, 33 percent are from urban and suburban areas and 40 percent are from rural non-farm areas.
So what's the FFAattraction?
We don't have to go far for answers.
Frederick County boasts the largest, most active of the 32 FFA chapters in Maryland -- at Linganore High School, whose 130 members account for one-tenth of the state's FFA membership. An April 21 article in The News-Post honed in on some of the factors at play in FFA popularity. There were those you might expect: "teachers and the support they get from the local agricultural community," and "the Frederick County Public School System."
But the real FFA edge comes from its ability to remain relevant. Linganore High FFA president Ashley Stevens put it like this: "It used to be strictly for agriculture kids who lived on a farm and showed livestock, now we have FFA kids in the city schools ... and that's good because the FFA teaches skills you can use all your life."
To be clear, FFA is not an extracurricular endeavor. The program completes a three-part model of education wherein classroom instruction is applied to hands-on "supervised agricultural experiences," which include starting a business or working for an established company. Classroom learning and SAEs are further reinforced through curriculum-enhancing initiatives undertaken in the community.
Therein lies the attraction -- FFA's contemporary present-and-accounted-for approach to the world and to members of the generations who stand to inherit it; an agri-savvy viewpoint also informed by precepts that have grounded the organization from the outset: "Learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live, living to serve."
If only FFA membership could be made mandatory for everyone.
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