SD Agricultural Education and FFA History

Current Status

by Clark W. Hanson, Professor Emeritus, Agricultural Education, SDSU

Authors’ Note: To commemorate the passage of the Smith Hughes Act of 1917, Dr. Hanson has written a historical summary of events that occurred in the South Dakota Agricultural Education program. Over a period of time a series of articles will share how the South Dakota program originated and developed the past 100 years.

It is over 100 years ago since the Ravinia Consolidated School was approved to receive federal Smith - Hughes funds to operate a high school vocational agriculture program in South Dakota. Where are we at?  What has been the result of slightly over 100 years of trial and error, planning, revising and moving ahead with best practice as a guide?

Until the pandemic struck, only one State FFA Convention was not completed as scheduled.  That occurred in 1942 during WW II. The pandemic of 2020 -2021 caused the 2020 FFA Convention to be presented in a virtual setting. The 2021 State FFA Convention was conducted in Rapid City. South Dakota State University was not in a position to guarantee the necessary “settings” for the convention to be schedule in Brookings. The available space and necessary health related conditions were available in Rapid City. The availability of the Central States Fair grounds was greatly appreciated.

Nearly 1,700 FFA members attend the 2021 Convention. The Tonka Family was recognized as the 2020 South Dakota FFA Family of the Year and the Sanderson Family was recognized as the 2021 FFA Family of the Year.
 
It is appropriate to recognize and thank all who made the necessary adjustments to enable the 2020 and 2021 State FFA Conventions to be conducted.

Today, the local FFA member has a wide variety of activities to explore careers even though specific course content may not be taught at a career entry level.   The career exploration of the agricultural education field is expressed in the Leadership Development Events (LDE) consisting of: Agricultural Issues Forum, Conduct of Chapter Meetings, Creed Speaking, Employment Skills, Extemporaneous Public Speaking, Parliamentary Procedure and Prepared Public Speaking. More specific career exploration occurs in the Career Developments Events (CDE) consisting of Agricultural Communications, Agricultural Sales, Agricultural Technology & Mechanical Systems, Agronomy, Dairy Cattle Evaluation & Management, Dairy Cattle Handlers Activity, Environmental & Natural Resources, Farm & Agribusiness Management, Floriculture, Food Science & Technology, Forestry, Horse Evaluation, Livestock Evaluation, Marketing Plan, Meat Evaluation & Technology, Milk Quality & Products, Nursery/Landscape, Poultry Evaluation and Veterinary Science. The Agri-Science program encourages members to participate in the FFA sponsored Agri-Science Fair competition which includes six areas; Animal Systems, Environmental and Natural Resources Systems, Food Products and Processing Systems, Plant Systems, Power, Structural and Technology Systems and Social Systems. Six separate divisions exist including both individual and team: individual members in 7-8 grade; two team members, 7-8 grades; individual member, 9-10 grades; two team members, 9-10 grades; individual member, 11-12 grades and two team members, 11-12 grade. The traditional Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) projects offer placement and entrepreneurship opportunities supported by 45 proficiency award areas to recognize excellence and growth for SAE accomplishments.

At the present time, women hold contracts for over 50% of the Agricultural Education positions in South Dakota.

In 2021, South Dakota FFA Foundation presented scholarships to 30 FFA members representing 25 Chapters. The National FFA Scholarship program, 2020, awarded 21 scholarships, totaling $55,250, to South Dakota FFA members representing 14 Chapters.

The local agriculture education instructor has received support from two sources. The national Agricultural Council has provided significant fiscal leadership for the Agricultural Education profession. The professional resources developed by the National Association of Agricultural Educators are extensive.   

At the present time, South Dakota State University reports 83 Agricultural Education majors, with Agricultural Communication reporting 52 majors and Agricultural Leadership reporting 36 majors. The number of majors enrolled in Agricultural Communication and Agricultural Leadership is significant as to the ease in which those majors can be switched to Ag Ed with the addition of the teacher preparation credentials.  The three majors are very similar in nature.

State-wide FFA membership growth was most evident as eight South Dakota FFA Chapters received charters during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years.
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, South Dakota has approximately 6900 students enrolled in local agricultural education classes with 95 FFA Chapters composed of 4,589 state–wide members. The state-wide program is supported with a professional teacher base consisting of 102 agricultural instructors. It is interesting to note that over 2000 high school students elect not to be members of the FFA, an organization dedicated to assist in career choice and the opportunity to develop leadership skills for youth.

The National FFA was organized on November 20, 1928 at the 3rd National Congress of Vocational Agriculture Students. Today the National FFA consists of 760,112 members who belong to 8,730 local FFA Chapters supported by more than 13,000 agricultural teachers who also serve as the local FFA Advisor. There are 544,985 adults who have bonded together under the FFA Alumni umbrella and identify with 2,557 Alumni Chapters.

The South Dakota secondary agricultural education program is directed by Brianna Fabris, staff member in the Division of Career and Technical Education and serves as the State FFA Advisor with assistance provided by Dani Herring, Executive Secretary, SD FFA Association.

The SD FFA Foundation was established in 1974 with the goal of raising funds to “….develop, maintain and enhance FFA initiatives.” Today the day-to-day activities of the Foundation are directed and managed by Gerri Eide, Executive Director and Gretchen Sharp, Executive Assistant.

Currently, serving the profession at the FFA national level are SDSU teacher educators; Dr. Troy White, a member of the committee sponsoring the National FFA Chapter Conduct of Meeting Leadership Development Event; Dr. Laura Hasselquist, completing her term, 2021, as Chair of the  Program Improvement Committee for the National Association for Agricultural Educators and retired teacher education staff member, Dr. Lon Moeller, currently serving as the Superintendent of the Farm & Agribusiness Management Career Development Event.

Dani Herring, SD FFA Executive Secretary reflects:  

"As for the current status of FFA, I think we're doing a great job of providing programs for students in this unprecedented time. We are doing all we can to make sure FFA remains relevant and a priority for students in SD schools. I believe we need to continue to look at our programs for future student needs and growth and make sure we will continue to serve FFA members as we have since the beginning."

"The National FFA is working towards 100% FFA membership in the US by 2028, which I think is great. What I don't want to have happen is having all these new FFA members just for the sake of having more members. FFA needs to make sure they can serve all those students in some way, which is going to force us to change our thinking in some ways, and to change our programming to meet the needs of all of those students as equally as possible. With that amount of growth we're going to see the need for more events and programming, this will mean additional staff at the state level to deal with all that growth. While I think it would be great, as some states have already done, to move SD to 100% membership like National FFA is pushing. We need to make sure as an organization we can handle all the growth."

The current situation as viewed by SDSU Agricultural Education Professor, Laura Hasselquest:

"The Every Child Succeeds Act, which replaced No Child Left Behind, has stated that Career and Technical Education (CTE) is part of a well-rounded education. CTE completer rates are part of a school’s state report card. Work based learning is becoming really popular. Currently, to qualify for CTE, programs must show that
they have work based learning opportunities for students. Because it’s considered part of a well-rounded education more and more schools are looking to start Ag programs. SDSU had 14 graduates this year and they all have jobs. Anyone that wants a classroom position can get one. Because there is such a demand, we are getting
more and more alternative certified teachers and traditionally trained teachers who are picking up CTE endorsements."