In the opinion of many, America is the greatest country on Earth. We have immense amounts of freedom, diversity of all different types, and this country is home to nearly 319 million individuals. Although the lives of many Americans are practically perfect, our home country, and as all others, has flaws, and some of our biggest fall under the category of agriculture.
Far before our time, agriculture became widely known and used, in fact, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture is known as the neolithic revolution, and it is considered to be a turning point in global history. Today, in America, agriculture is very industrialized, commercialized, and seemingly always advancing. Although it’s phenomenal that we live in a day and age where technology can provide for us, get the job done, and get it done quickly, having such industrialized systems in agriculture places a greater demand on finite resources like fossil fuel. Some individuals have lost touch with the idea of getting their hands dirty and would rather just turn on a machine to do their job for them. As FFA members, we’ll continue to work hard and work small scale; with our hands rather than watch machine run procedures. We’ll continue to make tiny differences because instead of wasting our valued natural resources, we’d rather earn experience and respect through hard work.
Another inevitable problem that American agriculture faces is waste, and not only the waste that happens when perfectly good food is thrown away for no reason. American agriculture faces the type of waste that corresponds to negligence and the lack of agricultural employees. Not enough people are willing and able to work as someone involved in agriculture. Therefore, in total, $165 billion is wasted on food per year in the United States, 52% being fruits and vegetables, and 7% being crops that were stranded and left to rot. Getting more people involved in agriculture and influencing them to choose a career in agriculture will give us the chance to stop wasting valuable resources, due to negligence, and instead, find new ways to use them.
Although there are numerous problems within American agriculture, some in which I’ve mentioned, and some far beyond that - perhaps the biggest problem we face is lack of agricultural education. It’s not total ignorance, it’s not that people don’t want to learn, it’s that they’re never really given a chance. In school, we’re given the opportunity to pick our classes, as long as we’re sure we have our four core subjects; math, science, English, and history. But, many schools in the United States lack agricultural classes and clubs. Thankfully, in our generation, intercirricular opportunities with agriculture are becoming more popular, but for generations before us, they may know little to nothing about the real world of agriculture. There’s a simple solution for how we FFA members raise all generations, both before us and the ones to come after, to have respect for agriculture. We simply talk about what we love.
When we, as FFA members, zip up our corduroy jackets, not only are we filled with pride, but more often times than not, we’re asked what our jackets mean and what club we’re a part of. We proudly reply with information about FFA, and what it means to us. Many will continue to ask questions about the FFA and farming, but it is our duty to open their eyes to the wide world of agriculture. Therefore, my mission, as an FFA member, is to inform the people. I need to teach individuals both inside and outside of this organization, that there is more to agriculture than just farming. When we give people the gift of education on the topic of agriculture, we spark their interest to agricultural careers they never even knew existed. When we stop yelling at little girls for getting their dresses dirty and instead get them their first pair of barn boots, when we stop telling young boys that being a scientist is a far shot, and he’ll never make it instead opening his eyes to the world of agricultural science, and when we take a second to tell that curious stranger on the street that we’re part of FFA; and it’s a lot more than just farming, we’re constructing a new generation of individuals with a respect for agriculture. We need to come together as a whole inside of this organization, and we need to teach, with not just words, but actions. We need to continue informing the people, continue working on our small farms, continue putting in effort at our community service days, and days of service, continue providing for our communities with FFA projects, continue to pick up every opportunity we have to speak publicly about the program that we invest so much time and effort into, we need to make a difference in the field of agriculture and never give up, but to begin, we must, as E.M. Tiffany said decades ago, believe in the future of agriculture. And I do.
