June 27, 2019

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All photos provided by the National FFA.

By Mark Poeschl, CEO, National FFA

Chrysta Beck from Ohio grew up raising chickens on her family’s farm. When she joined FFA in ninth grade, she began experimenting with poultry health. Soon, the project grew in scope. By her senior year, Chrysta was testing how different probiotics, when injected into an egg before a chicken hatches, improved the chicken’s health and reduced the need for antibiotic treatments. Chrysta now studies at Mississippi State University and plans to be a poultry veterinarian.

 As a teenage FFA member, Eric Koehlmoos convinced his parents to let him build an ethanol production facility in the basement of their Iowa home so he could test switchgrass as the primary ingredient in ethanol. Eric’s goal was to consider how lower-quality land could still be used as a fuel replacement to oil. Now he’s studying to be an agricultural education teacher because he wants to “spark new ideas in the next generation of agriculturists.”

Libby Baker-Mikesell, a Pennsylvania FFA member, lives in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, an area impaired by the phosphorous runoff created by large-scale production agriculture. As a student, she grew crops like buckwheat, sorghum, and oats to study, which resulted in the most phosphorus uptake to reduce runoff and restore water health. She learned that sorghum was the most beneficial, and helped produce new management practices for farmers across the region as they try to increase the health of the entire Chesapeake Bay.

Telling the stories of these FFA members and the countless others just like them is the best part of my job. They give me a feeling of hope and pride in what the next generation can do as we face daunting challenges. And, they show the result of the financial support FFA uses to deliver and grow the opportunities these students have maximized.

It’s incredible to go to work each day knowing that we are turning the investment our generous supporters have made in FFA into a program that improves the lives and communities of our students, while moving the world toward solving some astonishingly large problems.

You’ve probably heard that the growth of our global population will require a 50 percent increase in the world’s food and fiber output. In the next decade alone, we’ll add one billion people to our planet that will need to be fed, clothed, and sheltered. Meanwhile, these extraordinary challenges are running head-on into major roadblocks such as global trade tensions and climate change. Another hurdle to solving these problems is developing the next generation of leaders and workers who will have the talents, knowledge, and desire to find answers to it all.

This is where FFA is ready to make a difference. Students like Chrysta, Eric, and Libby are just three examples of how our local FFA chapters are the best way to develop tomorrow’s leaders we so desperately need.

FFA has been around since 1928. Back then, when the organization was known as the Future Farmers of America, it was designed to give purpose and direction to young farm boys who lacked the opportunity to develop leadership and self-expression. Today, our focus is on lifting students in all communities to become the leaders, workers, and innovators who will meet the demand of our growing population. We’ve focused on being inclusive and robust in our offerings. FFA is giving students additional skills and a realization that their talents are valuable in the world economy.

FFA is students like Chrysta, Eric, and Libby – and more than 670,000 more who are engaged in the premier school-based youth leadership development organization in America. That’s a record for our organization, and I expect us to reach 1 million student members in less than 10 years. More than any other school-based organization, FFA has the most prepared and extensive platform to deliver students who will meet the challenges of the next generation.

Yet we see these gains despite the difficulties in reaching every student every day. The biggest issue we face is a shortage of qualified teachers in agricultural education.

The model that makes FFA possible requires a school to have a functioning agricultural education program. Without that, students have no avenue to the leadership and life skills taught in FFA, nor can they access the competitive FFA events that encourage innovative and technological skill development.

That means we are laser-focused on recruiting and retaining teachers to guide agricultural education and FFA programs. Last year, nearly 50,000 students nationwide saw their experience in an agricultural education and FFA environment negatively impacted by a lack of qualified teaching professionals.

The demand for FFA programs by students, teachers, and community leaders is only making that challenge tougher. More student involvement in FFA and agricultural education is creating demand for additional instructors at successful programs. School boards and administrators are seeing the incredible value of FFA as the only leadership development program that offers the unique combination of classroom curriculum, experiential work-based learning, and leadership/life skills.

Even with the challenges of making sure agricultural education classrooms and FFA can reach as many students as possible, we are actively building our organization to suit the needs of the 21st century.

We’re doing this by increasing the relevancy of our programs, driving more teacher access to advanced training programs, and developing new concepts that detail the innovative and technological side of agriculture today. Our focus on engaging FFA members in innovation and technology hit a new level last year with our launch of FFA Blue 365 and the FFA Blue Room at the National FFA Convention & Expo. This initiative drew unparalleled attention from both traditional supporters of FFA, such as John Deere, and new ones like Microsoft and Amazon, and delivered such a stirring experience for students that more than 96 percent of the participants identified a new career interest after taking part in the FFA Blue Room.

It was thrilling to see such a positive reception to the innovative concepts our world desperately needs more of, and I look forward to growing those ideas further.

All told, FFA is a unique organization. If you come from a school that is tied to one of our more than 8,600 chapters across the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, FFA might feel like a natural institution in the education environment. But the fact is, FFA is a nonprofit national organization funded largely by sponsors and donors. Without support, our model and our impact on students wouldn’t exist.

But that also gives us an advantage. Our program is one that can exist in any educational environment. We’re in public schools, private schools, charter schools, and even home schools in some areas.

We’re built that way because we have to be. The students who will become tomorrow’s leaders deserve the FFA experience, regardless of their school setting. I’m determined to make sure more and more students get that opportunity.

Since I’ve been at FFA, we’ve accelerated our pace to become more than a legacy organization that parents and former members remember fondly. We have sharpened our focus because it’s clear that the world is demanding it. Our future is dependenton students like Chrysta, Eric, and Libby – and hundreds of thousands more behind them – to solve the massive challenges ahead.

The answers to an exploding global population and the strain of other global challenges won’t come easy. But if we invest in solutions that are already producing students mindful of and willing to tackle the problems, we’ll get there a lot quicker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Poeschl has been CEO of the National FFA Organization and the National FFA Foundation since 2016. Poeschl spent 33 years in the animal nutrition industry. He began his career at Ralston Purina in 1983. He joined Carl S. Akey, Inc., in 1987, where he served as CFO, COO, and VP of operations. In 2007, Poeschl was named president and CEO for Provimi’s North American business and later became Group VP for business operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 2011, Provimi was sold to Cargill, and he was named VP, group director at Cargill Animal Nutrition. Poeschl earned a degree in agriculture from the University of Nebraska in 1983.

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