Let’s just get this out of the way: Agricultural education is not just about farming, and neither is FFA. Agricultural education, or “ag ed” for short, is livestock production and wildlife ecology. It’s floral design and landscaping. It’s agriculture communications and law. It’s an instructional program as vast as a wheat field or cattle pasture, and it’s the main avenue through which FFA—a student-led organization—reaches youth for leadership development opportunities, personal growth, and career success and readiness. 

Texas FFA, the state affiliate of the national organization, has been around for 93 years and has just under 140,000 student members with 1,079 local FFA chapters and about 2,300 ag teachers who guide those local programs and students. In the state of Texas alone, there are more than 214,000 students enrolled in agricultural education classes. As Texas FFA Executive Director Austin Large says, “We’re in the tiniest, little towns and the biggest cities we’ve got here in the state.” 

To understand everything ag ed encompasses, Large starts by explaining how career and technical education is a big umbrella, and agriculture, food, and natural resources is one of its spokes. 

“Agricultural education is the combination of what happens in the classroom, what happens with student development and FFA, and what happens outside of the classroom through our work-based learning experiences, which we call supervised agricultural experiences [SAE],” he says. “Picture a three-circle Venn diagram where all three of those circles overlap.” 

A variety of ag ed courses are taught in the school system, and to be an FFA member, a student must be enrolled in one of those courses. These courses range from a standard introductory course to anything from fishery to ag mechanics. Peggy Georg is a teacher at Jourdanton High School in Jourdanton ISD and an FFA advisor. She teaches one of the ag ed introductory courses, as well as classes on livestock production, advanced animal science, and small animal management. She says those aforementioned circles intertwine together to foster growth in students. 

“They learn through classroom instruction or our meat science lab, our floral lab, or our shop, and they take that knowledge base and then apply it to the FFA competitions they may do, or apply it to their SAE projects, like taking care of their animals and raising rabbits, chickens, turkeys, pigs, all the way up to cattle projects,” Georg says. “But we also have students who may have a job placement, so they may work in a feed store, have a hay bale business, or be a vet assistant. We’ve had kids work at horse farms before. So, they take all those skills and then apply them to something. They’re learning skills that they’re going to be able to use far past high school and into college and their professional careers as well.” 

Seeking Out the Ag 

The opportunity for growth—whether in confidence, leadership, friendship, or even, yes, literally growing a crop—is a huge draw for students. Emily Dreyer is one such student. 

Dreyer was an FFA member throughout her four years of high school. She graduated from Tuloso-Midway High School in May 2021 and plans to study agriculture communications and leadership at Texas Tech University come fall 2021. Although she was already familiar with FFA (her grandfather and father were FFA members), it wasn’t until watching her older sister go through FFA that the wheels started to turn—especially once Dreyer reached high school and was in search of her own community after coming from a different school. 

“I got to see the joy that FFA brought her,” Dreyer says of her sister. “I got to watch her develop firsthand. Having her as a role model really helped me in deciding what I wanted to do. I joined every single club—I was in the knitting club for a few days, I was on the cheerleading squad. I was really searching for my friend group, and FFA was there for me.” 

Like many students, Dreyer’s FFA journey began with an ag introductory course, but it was the ag teachers and FFA advisors who really helped her find her way. 

“Besides my sister, my ag teachers were my first experience with what FFA was and what it really means to be a member,” Dreyer says. “My ag teachers, when they saw potential and when they see potential in somebody, they made sure to tell them. Freshman year, they told me they saw something in me. They knew I could do stuff that I didn’t even know I could do. They guided me. They opened my eyes to all the different opportunities.” 

Georg confirms that most FFA members have a similar path to Dreyer. Often, those who join ag ed already have some sort of background or knowledge of either ag ed itself or FFA, but there are also students who join a class simply because they may have an elective to fill. Regardless of what brought a student in, the advisors seize on every chance to show students what agricultural education is all about. 

“The beauty with ag ed, the beauty with FFA, is there’s literally anything and everything for someone out there,” Georg says. “You just have to find it.” 

Advisors lean on their knowledge and passion for agriculture and building connections with students to further their success within FFA because the end goal is the same no matter what: “It’s so much more than just teaching them ag. It’s helping them become productive members of society,” Georg says. 

It doesn’t hurt that ag ed is set up in a such a way that students immediately can put lessons into practice with a variety of hands-on experiences and activities, with their advisors there to offer coaching and reflection. This pattern of “experience, reflection, experience,” in Large’s opinion, is why students are naturally attracted to ag ed and FFA. 

“Everything that we do, really, in agricultural education is set up in that way, as we provide students with these really cool experiences, and we guide them through reflection and conceptualization about, ‘How did it go, and why did it go that way?” he explains. “Then we help them kind of create an action plan of, ‘So what do I do different next time?’ And we give them another opportunity to try it, and we just do that over and over and over again.” 

What Ag Can Do for You 

Ask anyone in FFA what agricultural education can do for a student, and be prepared for a long, wide-ranging answer, all of which will hit on the triad of classroom learning, student development within FFA, and the SAEs. 

“We have students who own and operate their own businesses, who are working as employees within agricultural businesses, and who are conducting agricultural research,” Large says. “We have students who are conducting service-learning experiences as a part of that, and then we actually have some schools that operate businesses, but then have the students take on the leadership of those. We have a great example up near Amarillo, the Wildorado FFA chapter. They own an entire beef cattle herd, and the students manage that. So, they’ve got an executive team, they’ve got a marketing team, they have a research team, so all of these students are basically operating a cattle business together.” 

And it’s more than just simply going through the motions of these experiences. Each SAE, for example, allows students a natural chance to build character. 

“I bring up the SAE because that’s where we learn a lot of the grit of what it means to be an FFA member, what it means to be a person, and what it means to be a leader,” Dreyer explains. “My SAE is raising cattle, and that teaches you a lot about confidence because you have to have the confidence to walk your 1,500-pound animal and have full control over it. 

“I learned hard work and dedication because I had to go out and feed my animal every morning and every night, and wash him and bathe him and exercise him, and make sure he was ready for the show,” she continues. “I had to be reliable because he was relying on me, and I also had so many other people relying on me, so I had to be able to show up for not only the animal, but the people around me.” 

The FFA component—where the leader development and student growth come in—cannot be overstated, either. Through this, FFA provides students scholarship opportunities, chances to travel for competitions and other events, and leadership training. Because FFA is student-led, its members often conduct many conference sessions and maintain communication with other chapters and members. For Dreyer, the leadership aspect has been a main focus. 

“I definitely learned some self-confidence, mostly in my ability to captivate an audience or that I was good enough to lead whatever I was talking about,” Dreyer says. “FFA really taught me to build community. I’ve also been able to learn things through teaching, whether it’s through public speaking or teaching responsibility. The most recent workshop I did was called ‘On Purpose for a Purpose,’ so while I’m trying to find my purpose, I’m also able to help other members find their purpose, and we can walk through this journey together.” 

Georg and Large both believe these experiences and characteristics are what set FFA students apart when it comes to future successes, such as attending college or entering the work force. According to mytexasffa.org, students with two, four, or six semesters of ag ed courses have a higher graduation rate than their peers and university leaders note that Texas FFA students are more prepared. 

“I think the big part is their adaptability, flexibility, and their desire to continue to learn,” Georg says. “They [students] keep wanting to learn and keep trying harder, and I think universities truly look at that. It’s their well-roundedness, too. You look at any of our students’ resumes and they have community service, volunteering with different organizations, and leadership positions in student organizations here at the high school. 

“Yeah, they know a lot about agriculture, but they know a lot about how to be a public speaker and be a leader and a teammate—that’s probably one of the biggest things that employers or universities look at,” Georg continues. 

Large points out their website even features corporate sponsors like Wyndham Hotels that aren’t directly tied to agricultural education but know FFA students have a proven track record. 

“Our students are hard workers,” Large says. “They [universities and employers] know that they’re [students are] going to show up to work on time, and they’re going to get the job done. They have a really strong base level of skills that are going to help them find success.” 

For Dreyer, ag ed and FFA does all those things and more: “FFA is just a place where ideas can be built, where friendships can be fostered and created. It is a safe environment where we are able to explore and become a better person in the long run, and we are able to do all this while learning and getting those hands-on experiences.” 

Cultivating Growth 

When you consider all the things the world needs from the agriculture industry, you realize agriculture is practically the foundation of everything in our world. For FFA students, their advisors, and anyone even remotely curious about ag ed, that means there are numerous entry points into the field—and that FFA is more than what you think. 

Large uses an example from his childhood: He grew up in Fresno County, California, one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the U.S. and source of most of the world’s almond supply. 

“I had no idea what agriculture was, and I literally drove past it every day,” he explains. “It wasn’t until I got involved in my agriculture program in high school that I started to understand how this industry is supporting the local economy I live in. Recognizing that and just being an informed consumer is really important. Am I involved in production agriculture? No, not at all. I work in an office job in Austin. 

But I’ve learned so many skills that have allowed me to lead a large nonprofit association, and I learned and created a network that helped us to create these really unique experiences for students.” 

Georg echoes those same sentiments: “I think as a whole, people need to understand that agricultural education is very vital to how we are going to continue our existence and grow. We’ve got to come up with new advancements of growing and raising food and building different products. The aspect an agriculturist can bring in is crucial. This world is ever-changing. Agricultural education takes what we were founded on, but we also look more into the future and what we can do to prepare for 15, 20 years down the line in terms of new jobs, better ways, and technology. It’s a very vital piece of a student’s education.” 

Dreyer and her fellow FFA classmates are living proof of that force we’ll need to achieve a prosperous future. She recalls a common saying among FFA students: “We’re a lot more than plows and sows; we’re leaders, believers, and achievers.” 

“FFA members are going to be the next presidents, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, farmers, agriculturalists, teachers, principals, and medical professionals,” she says. “We send people into every industry, and you can see the values that FFA has instilled in them.”