FFA Increasing Numbers

There’s hardly a day goes by that a person doesn’t hear cutting remarks against agriculture. Oddly enough, even though the agriculture industry has been under attack over the last several years the Future Farmers of America organization has seen its membership numbers skyrocket. More high school students than ever before have joined the FFA this year and they are not just “farm kids”, many of the students that are joining have no farming background. The reason for the diverse membership pool seems to lean towards the FFA’s expansion over the last decade to encompass not only production agriculture, but agricultural sciences and agribusiness as well. This change has especially helped increase FFA membership in the urban schools, which had seen dwindling membership numbers since the 1980’s. For these students the FFA program has opened up a whole new world, introducing them to several hundred career possibilities within the agriculture industry. As Hugh Mooney, north coast regional supervisor for agriculture education at the California Department of Education likes to say, “ This isn’t your dad’s FFA anymore.”