Ag Time WITH ABBY

FFA Membership and COVID-19

- ABBY CRAWFORD

THE YEAR WAS 1928. It had been 11 years since the Smith-Hughes Act had been passed, allowing for vocational agriculture education in classrooms. Thirty-three farm boys from 18 states gathered in Kansas City for the National Livestock Judging contest. It was here that the Future Farmers of America was formed.

Fast forward 92 years, the National FFA Organization is one of the largest student-led organizations in the United States. In 2020, membership reached a new record high, recording 760,113 students with Florida ranking fourth in the nation with 29,772 FFA members! That is almost 60,000 up from 2019 numbers of 700,170. I wonder if those 33 farm boys ever imagined where their club would be today.

In order to be an FFA member, you must be enrolled in a multi-level, sequential ag course, which is mainly any middle or high school program. However, it left a lot of us wondering how membership numbers will be this year, given so many students are choosing to use virtual learning platforms. Florida FFA released the following statement in late August regarding the options to maintain membership: