02/25/08 Celebrating FFA

Celebrating FFA. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Last week was National FFA Week. When I was growing up it was known as Future Farmers of America and according to Liza Markel, FFA Marketing Specialist, it has changed but is still the same. MARKEL: As many people know it used to be Future Farmers of America which we will always embrace and we just happened to change our official name to National FFA Organization to just better represent what agriculture is about these days. It's not just production agriculture, it's technology and science and marketing and communication and the business side of things and the sales side so you know FFA kids, there's something for everyone. FFA Week is a time to pay tribute to an organization that has been part of the fabric of so many kids lives. MARKEL: Well National FFA Week is definitely a time for chapters all across the country to celebrate and what's cool about it is we know probably, virtually every chapter  all 7300 of them are doing something this week; celebrating their chapter and FFA in general. They take the entire week to do outreach events to educate the community about agriculture and what FFA is about these days. Most of the chapters celebrate in some way including doing community service projects and even driving a tractor to school. MARKEL: We have chapters that will send us little emails saying what they are doing like they will have a corn hole tournament or a lock-in at their school. A lot of them will take the entire week and have a different dress up day for each week like pajama day or blue and gold day where they all wear their FFA jackets or t-shirts. There's always something called Ag Olympics or Ag OlymPIGS as some people like to call it where it's just an entire day of games. I was not a member of FFA growing up but Markel says there is a place for adults as well. MARKEL: We're always, always, always encouraging adults to assist in FFA and they can do this in many ways. Obviously as an parent you can encourage your kids to be an FFA member to kind of tell them what it's about, to assist them putting aside the stereotypes and then parents can get involved in the chapter as an alumni or as a mentor or working with a certain career development team and the best thing about alumni is you don't have to have been in FFA Fore more information on joining the fun, visit FFA.org or contact a local chapter. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.