Monday is day six of the New York State Fair. There is a new building on the fairgrounds, as Future Farmers of America now has a permanent place to cultivate young people in agriculture.<\/p>\n
Visitors to the new building can find displays from students, colleges and aquatic animals. The construction is also new \u2014 workers were still putting windows on it this time last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really believe this is now going to showcase the amazing work of our FFA members across the state,\u201d said Terry Hughes, superintendent of the FFA Building at the New York State Fairgrounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudent displays that they put together themselves. And most of them from maple to different technical pieces that they welded or built themselves. All of these are highlighting what schools really do right in their very own hometowns, depending on the community and the different areas of agriculture,\u201d said Sahe Schroeder, New York State FFA pjresident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s so great about this building is that this is an investment into our future, because not everyone that’s coming to the fair is someone who is involved in agriculture or has a deep understanding of what agriculture looks like, especially here in New York State,\u201d said Schroeder.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs this global population grows, we need more food, we need more fiber, we need more products to support this population. Therefore, we need more individuals working in that industry. And so, the FFA creates opportunities for students that have no agricultural background, no experience at all in agriculture,\u201d said Hughes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been a groundswell of interest in developing and providing agriculture education for students across the state. In the last 10 years we have had more than 100 new schools develop agriculture programs and create FFA chapters,\u201d said Hughes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this is important because it not only gives these kids skills that they can use when they get out of school. It also gives them that possibility of meeting new people,\u201d said Phillip Keville, FFA advisor at Madison Central School.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be a part of FFA and not be a farmer. So, it’s not just for the farmer,\u201d said Keville.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur organization is really striving just to show the public that everyone has a place in agriculture,\u201d said Schroeder.<\/p>\n
For the next few years, a statewide FFA convention will be held at the new fairgrounds building. Visitors to the FFA building can find it near the sheep barn and wool center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday is day six of the New York State Fair. There is a new building on the fairgrounds,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,28813,9,11,10,49,48507,51,50,12,200],"class_list":["post-333810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-central-ny","tag-krystal-cole","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-fair","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}