ABOVE: Fairmont FFA students pose for a photo at a restaurant after a small animals regional competition at Tri-City United in Montgomery. From left: Tyler Heckman, Gabby Leiding, Ben Griffin, Lacie Fetters and Macy Hanson

FAIRMONT– Students at Fairmont High School, and around the rest of the nation, have been celebrating National FFA week this week. There are about 60 active students in Fairmont’s FFA program.

Katie Elder is an ag teacher at Fairmont High School. She’s also co-advisor of the school’s FFA chapter along with the school’s other ag teacher, Cassandra Brown.

Elder shared that this year’s group of 60 students is almost twice the size of last year’s, when there was about 35 to 40 active FFA members. She thinks that Covid played into the low member numbers but that they’ve improved this year because there’s been more consistency with school not switching back and forth between distance and in-person learning.

Students can be in an ag class and not be in FFA, but a student must be in an ag class to be in FFA.

Elder said they opened FFA up to eighth graders this year and have about 10 students who joined. She anticipates there will be more next year.

“This year’s eighth graders were the first to take ag 7 last year,” Elder said.

She said with the addition of Brown this year, they were able to offer an ag 8 class, too. All students in 7th and 8th grade get a semester of an ag class. Elder said they teach the basics of where food comes from and the importance of agriculture. When students reach their freshman year, Exploring ag is offered as an elective.

“Some of them won’t choose it and some of them well,” Elder said.

Elder estimates she sees about 150 students a year between all of her ag classes. She said some students are extremely interested in FFA, some she and Brown try to convince to join and some just aren’t interested.

While FFA stands for Future Farmers of America, Elder estimates about half of the students in Fairmont’s FFA chapter come from some sort of agriculture or farming background.

“You just have to have a passion for agriculture. Some kids join because they want to be vet. Some join because they want to hang out and make friends,” Elder said.

All FFA members take part in a monthly meeting, but Elder said the Career Development Events (CDE) teams meet twice a month to prepare for the state competition.

Of CDE, Elder said, “It provides time management and responsibility. The teams plan a time to meet with us.”

There are a large number of CDE groups within FFA, which include ag sales, dairy, crops, fish and wildlife, horticulture, milk quality, small animals and soils.

Students pick what area they’re interested in and can form a team. Elder shared that the livestock team didn’t make it to state so switched to meat judging and have done well with that. She said they recently placed second in the region.

There’s been competitions almost every month, though teams only compete once. Elder said some competitions have been at South Central College in Mankato, Tri-City United Schools in Montgomery and Sibley East Fairgrounds. Students compete against anywhere from 15 to 30 other teams from around the region and the top few teams qualify for state.

“With most sports, right after you compete, you go to state. Some of these kids haven’t competed since October so they struggle with the fact that they still need to have practice,” Elder explained.

The state competition is April 24-26. As of now, eight teams have qualified for state but there are still a few regional competitions so there’s the potential for more teams to make it. Last year Elder said there were four or five teams that qualified for state.

Another part of FFA is Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE). This is an opportunity for students to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom and transfer it to the real world.

“They’re starting to introduce new SAE’s, like food service. Some kids work at HyVee so that’s their SAE,” Elder explained.

She said some students have kept bees and sold the honey for their SAE. Other students have raised and shown livestock. Elder said students keep records of their hours and finances and she and Brown advise them through the process.

Elder said she thinks the main reason behind FFA week is to promote and educate people on FFA and what it is. She said she believes there are some people who believe it’s a farming club for the boys, as that’s essentially how it started.

“Now it’s evolved to more that that. It’s not just for farmers but people who are passionate about the agriculture community and want to see it grow and expand,” Elder said.

It also gives students who don’t come from an agriculture background an opportunity to get involved.

She said she tries to instill into her students that FFA makes great leaders by creating skilled speakers and teaching students how to manage their time.

“For me, I wouldn’t be who I was today if it weren’t for FFA. It’s a great experience to have,” Elder said.