FFA, as said by one of our school’s advisors Jay O’Brien, is a “youth organization aimed to build students’ primer leadership, personal growth, and career success through agriculture education. ” FFA originally stood for the ‘Future Farmers of America’, but that changed in 1988 to more simply the ‘National FFA Organization’, the FFA stays out of tradition. This name change was due to the change in agriculture, where farmers weren’t the only ones involved in it. There are now more engineers, scientists, and many other careers involved. FFA in clubs and schools has changed as a result; they don’t only teach about cattle and crops, but they also have job interviews, speeches, and food science. These other subjects are what FFA calls CDEs, or Career Development Experiences. These are where FFA members gather and have competitions over certain subjects of the CDE. 

Cherryvale’s FFA does a lot for our community, like canned food drives, yard clean-up, and community beautification. They also collect donations for ‘Angel Tree’. ‘Angel Tree’ is where the upperclassmen in FFA go out and shop for gifts and toys for the children of the community who wouldn’t have them otherwise. FFA utilizes these activities to prepare members for the future. FFA advisor Amy Allen said that FFA prepares you by “working with different people who you might not work with the best, teaching you things out there that you don’t know, and giving you opportunities to better prepare you for life and work”. A side note, students that enroll can get out of school in FFA for CDEs, and active members get to go on a trip to Indianapolis to the National Convention with 60,000 other members from across the country.