93
Let’s hear the story of Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry Agriculture, and the people who make it happen. Sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm® - Rembolt Ludtke.
93
National FFA Week and All Things FFA with Stacey Agnew
National FFA Week is upon us, running February 15-22, 2025. In this episode we talk all things FFA with Stacey Agnew, Executive Director of the Nebraska FFA Foundation, and Spencer Hartman, an attorney at Rembolt Ludtke who also happens to be a former Nebraska FFA State Officer and a member of the Nebraska FFA Foundation Board of Directors.
Nebraska. It's not just a place, but a way of life. It's 93 counties that are home to innovative individuals. Carrying community. The spirit that runs deeper than its perfect story. It's a story that's gonna be told. Welcome to 93, the podcast.
SPEAKER_04:Welcome to 93, the podcast, where we talk about Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry agriculture, and the people who make it happen. I'm Mark Folson, your host for today's episode brought to you by Nebraska's law firm, Rumbold Lutke. National FFA Week is February 15th through the 22nd, and so we thought it'd be appropriate to talk about all things FFA, that dynamic youth organization dedicated to leadership development, personal growth, and career success through agricultural education. In today's episode, we are joined by Stacy Agnew, Executive Director of the Nebraska FFA Foundation. Also joining us is Spencer Hartman, an attorney at Rembolt Lutke, who also happens to be a former Nebraska FFA state officer and a current member of the Nebraska FFA Foundation Board of Directors. Stacy, Spencer, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Mark.
SPEAKER_04:We're gonna have fun today, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It's National FFA Week. It's coming up. Stacy, what is FFA? We may have some folks listening who don't know anything about FFA.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so FFA is the student organization for ag education classrooms. And so we describe it as a three-circle model. So if you have ag education in a school, you can offer a student organization, which is FFA. So that we think the blue and gold jackets. And so students may be taking a variety of different classes, animal science, plant science, natural resources, and then they can uh enroll in FFA. And um we're the jacket and compete in leadership uh programs and degree programs and just great uh community building uh events for FFA members. And then they also have what the third part of the circle is an SAE, which is a supervised DAG experience, which I think the three of us really like cattle.
SPEAKER_04:Correct. I know I did.
SPEAKER_00:That was mine.
SPEAKER_04:So you mentioned the blue jackets, blue corduroy jackets is kind of what FFA is known for. Do you still have your original one?
SPEAKER_01:I do.
SPEAKER_04:Spencer, do you? I do. It was an Imperial, and I just brought it back with me to Lincoln last trip out there.
SPEAKER_02:Cool though.
SPEAKER_04:So I still have mine, and actually I'm gonna get framed here pretty soon and actually put it on my wall in my office. I have some questions, quiz questions on the corduroy jackets, and let's see if you can get these answers right. When was the FFA blue corduroy jacket first created? What year?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I don't think it was it wasn't 1928. I'm gonna say 1936.
SPEAKER_04:Spencer. I was gonna say 29. 1933. I'll give you a couple. These are tough questions. So uh what is the maximum number of pens that should be worn on the front of an FFA channel? I know this one. Okay, you go first. Three. Okay, right hand.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, but there's it's the specific about each three. What are what's the specific your your highest degree, your highest uh like award, and your highest office.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. I agree.
SPEAKER_04:Next question. On average, how many FFA jackets are sold annually?
SPEAKER_01:Oh wow. Um five hundred thousand.
SPEAKER_04:I was gonna say a hundred thousand. Little, you're both a little high, ninety thousand. You get I I wish it were five hundred thousand. Uh a couple more. Okay. How many yards of corduroy are required to create just one FFA jacket?
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna say five.
SPEAKER_04:I was gonna say three. 1.6. You should know that. I did know that. And I'll give you one more. Um, in what year was the one millionth FFA jacket sold?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I think it was like within the last three years. So I'm gonna say 2023.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say 2010. 1964.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00:I should have when I was speaking about my numbers, maybe it was the million number, million FFA members that was like in the last three years.
SPEAKER_04:So just so our listeners know, they were not prepped on this question, so they did a really nice job with having no background on that information to prepare.
SPEAKER_02:So getting very few questions right.
SPEAKER_04:So, Stacy, uh, today in Nebraska, how many FFA chapters are there approximately?
SPEAKER_00:There's 218.
SPEAKER_04:Is that that's all-time high, all-time high. So, what do you attribute that to?
SPEAKER_00:I think um it's a little bit of a shift in thinking about the brain drain in Nebraska and um rural communities making sure young people come back. And I think we see local school districts saying, hey, well, if if we want them to come back, we're an ag driven community. So why are we not offering education specific to ag education, therefore providing FFA as the student organization? So I think that's why um when I taught, there were 115 FFA chapters.
SPEAKER_04:So give us a little background on how you got involved in uh agricultural education and became the executive director of the Nebraska FFA Foundation.
SPEAKER_00:I got involved with FFA when I was a junior in high school through um my local school, Palisade Consolidated with Juanita. Juanita had FFA, so I joined as a junior, got really involved, um, served as a state FFA officer, worked um for national FFA, doing leadership conferences. Um I knew that going back to farm wasn't gonna be an option. Um, so I I really loved agriculture, obviously, and I liked teaching with all the experiences that I had in FFA doing workshops and that type of thing. So ag education seemed like a natural fit for me. There weren't very many women in the 90s that were teaching ag. So I it was a little strange for me to think, oh yeah, I want to do what my ag teacher does. Um, but I did connect with a mentor, her name's Donnie Walters, and she's still a mentor of mine, and I actually work alongside her today. Um and she had just started teaching, and there were so there, I was the fifth female ag teacher. So there's Chris Bath, who's now at Waverly, and um anyway, so there were the there were four other women, and I think as a state officer, I'd interacted with them, so I felt like I can do this, I totally can do this. Um so that's how I got involved. And then um I taught um in Hardington and Freeman. So I taught for five years, and that I loved, I loved that job. Um, however, I I was making not a lot of money. Um, and so I um left teaching because um, not because I didn't enjoy it. Um I had asked the superintendent if I could have a greenhouse, and they laughed at me. And I said, okay, well, I'm ready to go on and do other things. And so I uh left and worked in industry for about eight years, and um I mentored a state FFA officer one year and is what's at state FFA convention, and a friend of mine uh who was on the FFA foundation board at the time had um, we were both at state FFA convention being recognized as the mentors of state officers. I had just had a baby, so I was like not looking at other jobs, wasn't interested. And he called me up like two days after state convention and said, Hey, we're looking for an executive director for the FFA foundation. And I was like, I don't know anything about running a foundation. I was an ag teacher and I did sales, you know, after that. And he said, No, I think you can do this. Just come in, bring your resume, and sit down with us over coffee. And I'm like, okay. Um, and that was that was 14 years ago. Wow. Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_04:And the foundation's grown substantially.
SPEAKER_02:Obviously, Spencer, you're on the board. I was just gonna ask, uh, what year do you know when was the foundation created, organized?
SPEAKER_00:In um 1990, 91. So yeah, um, shortly before I was a state officer.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so roughly 35 years ago. Born yet. Shortly very officer. Um yeah, no, I was gonna say, uh, I think uh we just reported last week, foundation has grown to just under$5 million in total assets. And so I recall having a conversation with uh Rick Damkroger and Ed Whipple, Randy Vlashin, some of those guys who are around getting this set up in the early 90s. And uh when I had mentioned to one of them that uh we were the foundation exceeded four million dollars, they were just blown away uh by the growth that it's seen uh in large part uh under your leadership over the last several years.
SPEAKER_00:So good volunteer board members too. It takes good people willing to um help share our story and ask people to support the work that we're doing.
SPEAKER_04:In in addition to those assets, your foundation kicks out a ton of money every year to chapters on local grants. Describe some of those grants that you've given out in recent years to chapters and what impact it has had on local communities.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So when I started, we didn't have a local chapter grant program. So I will just say, as an ag teacher, I know what it's like to not have any funding. Um, so that was really important to me to try to be able to have some type of grant program that local chapters could apply for. And so we give out uh close to$90,000 in um grants. And so they vary from um maybe from school-based enterprises, like starting um a gelato company or a beef jerky company, to um helping to provide new equipment for the ad classroom or the shop. I mean, we've had some where we've re we've re-established literally like their welding equipment. It was from circa 1950 from World War II. And which just blows my mind that that's how are we preparing young people for careers night? We don't have up-to-date equipment. So um even curriculum, um, we've had recently, oh, there's a new model now where it'll teach you how to um flip a baby calf in mama's tummy if it's backwards. And so we've yeah, funded models like that. It's so cool, the different things that we get. It's all over the board. Um there is a potato farmer from Gothenburg that we funded. Um, there's a brother and sister that we just funded this last year where they um have a flower farm uh I think around North Bend. Um and yeah, just really cool, diverse things that are really it's all about building a community from my from my vantage point and really helping to support local um programs because they there isn't always money available through that local school district. So that's the great part about the grant program.
SPEAKER_04:Spencer, if I'm not mistaken, you started a business in FFA in high school. You probably didn't have the luxury of having a grant like this, but if you could have had a grant like that, what would have meant to that business?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I started a hydroponic tomato business uh coming in as a freshman year. That was my SAE, supervised agricultural experience, uh, as well as uh cattle uh was part was that was part of the deal. But um, yeah, if had these been available, then I think getting that first greenhouse up and running and procuring all the supplies you need, the the furnace, the water lines, all of it, uh would have been incredibly helpful. And so I think it's uh really great to hear these success stories and the economic impact that FFA students are having on the state of Nebraska in in all of these communities.
SPEAKER_04:Stacy, you said you grew up uh on a farm nearby Palisade. What county did you grow up in?
SPEAKER_00:Hitchcock.
SPEAKER_04:In what license plate prefix?
SPEAKER_00:67.
SPEAKER_04:You know, preparing for today's episode, I discovered that Palisade is technically the city itself, it's technically in two counties.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it is, yeah. Good job. I'm not sure of any other city in Nebraska that's smart.
SPEAKER_04:It's such a metropolis that it takes two counties.
SPEAKER_00:The road, like right on the north side of the school is the county line. Yeah, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_04:Well, how would you describe the mission of the Nebraska FFA Foundation?
SPEAKER_00:So the mission of the Nebraska FFA Foundation is to invest in local students and local programs and statewide programming. Um, and we do that in three different areas growing leaders, which is about you, which you would think is oh, that's all about kids, but for us it's really about supporting that local, um not supporting the local teacher, but investing in that local teacher. So that's the growing leaders, building communities is about investing in the local FFA chapters and then creating career connections, which is helping to connect students all across the state with different industry opportunities with industry partners just to learn more about what are careers in their backyard or statewide.
SPEAKER_04:So we want to put you on the spot here. Uh you have many success stories at the Nebraska FFA Foundation. I've I've heard you tell many of those, and yeah, I know you have lots to choose from, but can you give our listeners one of those stories, uh, success stories that almost make a person, if not tear up, almost make them tear up, just what how what a wonderful story it is of what just investing in these people and these programs, what what that can mean.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm gonna go with the teachers, the teacher impact. Um there is a and I and I think because I connect to this personally, because we typically will lose teachers once between year five or seven. And one of the programs that we help to support for the Nebraska Agricultural Educators Association is called Accelerate, and it's for teachers between year um five and twelve. Um and it is a two-day conference that is put on by the national by a national association, and it's and it really helps teachers just kind of think about how are they spending their time and how can they balance, somewhat balance their work life. And I guess the success stories is we we pay for that and that just to have that provided and offered. I mean, we've we've had stories where we've had a lot of females come into the ag education industry um profession. And I think learning how to balance that by being a working mom, and you're literally also caring for all these other students as a teacher. And being an ag teacher is it's not like just a football coach and you've got a playbook. You've got about 75 different plays, and you're usually running them by yourself. And so this accelerate program, I think, really teaches our advisors how to ask for help. It is so hard as a teacher, you're just trying to survive that you don't even really have time to think about how do I ask others for help. Um, the last accelerate we just did was at the end of November, and at the end of um I went into the room as they were wrapping up, and there were three teachers that were just in tears because that program had given them tools. It created like a cohort, a small cohort of them that they could talk to each other about um this experience that they were having being a teacher. So that probably most recently is something that I just think is really important. I mean, we we take care of the students at the end of the day. We're taking care of chapters and students, and sometimes um I mean, being able to now support teachers to the level that we are is um I think really important and unique. And so I probably have the heart of a teacher, and so that's the program I really like. If you don't have teachers, you don't have programs.
SPEAKER_04:So Spencer, uh, what did your FFA advisor, ag teacher, mean to you and what impact did he or she have?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so FFA was a foundational experience for me for sure. And uh I'm far enough. While I might not have been born in 1990, I am far enough uh along in my life experiences to look back and say, wow, if I hadn't had this experience, I wouldn't have had that one, and and to sort of link those things together. Uh and so I think uh the experience I had both being able to start and grow a business uh with the guidance and framework uh that an SAE provides, uh, as well as to travel the state and the country uh competing in events and and then ultimately to serve as a Nebraska FFA uh state officer and and uh national committee chair. That was um really foundational in propelling what I've done since then.
SPEAKER_04:Stacy's heard my story before, but my um ag instructor, FFA advisor, is a guy named Mark Buell. And it wasn't until I grew up a little bit that I started to appreciate the number of hours that that gentleman put into us as students weekends, every night. I mean, every night after school till 9 or 10 p.m. Weekends we go down to we go over to Ames, Iowa to judge meet, we go up to Clarkson to look at nursery and landscape stuff, we go to Kansas City for uh parliamentary procedure, and uh I mean literally a hundred hours a week. It's it's incredible the investment he made in me and the other students, and I'm for that I'm grateful. I didn't appreciate it at the time, right? I was uh I was a dumb high school kid, but what a I just I thank you, Mr. Buell and all the ag teachers.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, ag teachers.
SPEAKER_04:So it's uh national FFA week. Uh again, it's February 15th through the 22nd. Uh what happens during National FFA week? Both nationally as well as what what's going on in Nebraska?
SPEAKER_00:So National FFA says, hey, every day there's something. So like Sunday is SAE Sunday, Monday is the day of service, there's alumni day, advisor appreciation day, give FFA day, Thursday you can donate, and Fridays wear blue. So National FFA kind of sets these and they give you lots of resources that you can use locally, but it is really about local FFA chapters celebrating um FFA locally with members and community leaders and those types of things. All kinds of fun things happen during the week.
SPEAKER_04:So on alumni day, which I think is next Tuesday, February 18th, we get that day off from work, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I don't, but so Stacy, if people want to learn more about the Nebraska FFA Foundation, where should they go?
SPEAKER_00:Any FFA foundation.org.
SPEAKER_04:And tons of useful information on there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's all kinds of information about our impact work. Um, you can learn about how to donate. Um, but there are lots of great impact stories on there. And so I would encourage people just to go check it out if um they want to see what we do.
SPEAKER_02:You had mentioned earlier about a student in Gothenburg, but can you talk a little bit to the statewide reach of the found the FFA foundation?
SPEAKER_00:FFA impacts a ton most most of the schools across the state, besides the ones in the urban, and besides a lot of the ones in Lincoln and Omaha, I would say.
SPEAKER_04:I think one misconception for those who were not involved in FFA is it's just about ag programs and ag production. But the reality is for me, the the greatest benefit FFA provided to me was the leadership programming and the speaking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Uh can you describe for our listeners some of the speaking contests and the training that goes through all from the very first moment you're an FFA member, you're kind of thrown into the fire.
SPEAKER_00:There's the FFA creed. I believe in the future of agriculture. I never learned I never learned the creed until I was a teacher because I didn't join until I was a junior. But probably like both of you, I did natural resource speaking and I think senior public speaking. And I probably got reds and blues at district or state. I mean, I just yeah. But yeah, Mark, it's it's I think. I think giving students an opportunity to learn to take risks and be uncomfortable is um I think the value of the leadership skill development event. So they vary, Spencer was very involved in leadership development events. There's also career development events as well that span, gosh, over 30 different technical areas where they're um assessed on their knowledge and that type of thing. But yeah, parliamentary procedure, I think, is was a really big thing that Spencer did.
SPEAKER_02:It was. We spent lots of hours.
SPEAKER_04:Hey, but you're talking to someone who was a member of the national champion parliamentary procedure team from 1984, 85 in Waverly.
SPEAKER_00:You guys won?
SPEAKER_04:We won.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:Trust me, they uh the when we came back to school, they had that little student gathering for the whole school because we won the national championship.
SPEAKER_00:Well, they should. That's a big deal. It's that's that's incredible.
SPEAKER_04:And the funny thing is, you think you don't, you know, it's it's a contest, right? But I still use those skills today, advising governmental bodies or even nonprofits that we do work for.
SPEAKER_00:I think um parliamentary procedure is a lost art, and I think it needs to be taught in all schools across Nebraska.
SPEAKER_04:Amen. I I fully support that. So, Stacy, something we ask all of our guests, and you get one word in just one word, that to you best describes and explains this great place in which we live and we work and is home to some 218 FFA chapters, the state of Nebraska. Give us your one word.
SPEAKER_00:Grit.
SPEAKER_04:Can you explain?
SPEAKER_00:Oh gosh. I think just when I think of greater Nebraska, I think about the hardworking people that live out there in our communities. And I think of cold weather like this. I mean, yeah, I mean, a lot of people are out making sure that cattle are fed, livestock are fed, um, you name it. You have to have grit to be able to, I think, live and work across Nebraska, period.
SPEAKER_04:Stacey Spencer, thank you for joining us today to talk about the impact that FFA has had and continues to have in Nebraska and across the entire United States. If you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or whatever your favorite podcast app is. I can't think of a better way to celebrate National FFA Week than sharing this episode with family and friends who've been positively impacted by all that FFA and Ag Education have to offer. Please keep listening as we release additional episodes on Nebraska. It's great communities, Nebraska's number one industry, agriculture, and the folks who make it happen.
SPEAKER_05:Thanks. This has been Nighty Three, the podcast, sponsored by Nebraska's law firm, Rembolt Ludke.
