By Justin Davey
We are fortunate at Successful Farming to publish FFA New Horizons magazine for the National FFA Organization (a youth organization that prepares members for premier leadership, personal growth and career success through agricultural education), and I’m lucky to be the magazine’s editor. These FFA member and chapter stories always inspire me (studying aquaponics in Connecticut, building elephant feeders in Pennsylvania, learning leatherwork in Nevada, and, in this case, covering the diverse agricultural education ecosystem FFA members in Hawaii benefit from).
A key goal of our content is to inform and inspire other FFA members. Another goal is to elevate the voices and experiences of the diverse FFA membership (more than 850,000 individuals from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), so I was thrilled when this story tip came in from National FFA staff. It just felt like it would go a long way in representing members from a far corner of the country.
The theme of FFA being an ohana (a Hawaiian word for “family”) struck me early. After all, FFA members are bonded by agricultural education and the organization’s many traditions. While Hawaii is far flung from the mainland, it is still part of the FFA family. American agriculture and FFA are larger than our country’s contiguous states, and Hawaii’s voice is important and necessary. “We’re so far from everyone else, being out in Hawaii, so a lot of times [our students] feel like they can’t compete,” says Waipahu Intermediate FFA advisor Ken Kozuma. “We don’t have big agriculture like a lot of these other states do, and for them to know that they’re national qualifiers and they placed amongst everyone else, I think that’s the biggest thing.”
In exploring this story’s viability, I quickly understood that the Waipahu Intermediate FFA Chapter is a model FFA program in Hawaii. I sensed that it would resonate with FFA members across the U.S. It is one of only two middle school FFA chapters in the state and the only middle school chapter on Oahu. While it’s on a smaller scale, students here learn big lessons about agriculture and food by building their own raised garden beds, growing vegetables in a vertical garden system and aquaponics system, and more. The lessons are like those learned on the mainland, but unique to the islands, so I wanted to shine a light on that uniqueness. I spent time talking with the two agriculture teachers/FFA advisors about the schools’ facilities, their lesson plans and student successes. This helped me start to build the story structure, and it also helped our photographer, David Ekstrom, start to envision photo and video opportunities.
I also found in these early conversations that the chapter was practically an overnight success. In its first year of existence (2017-18), Waipahu Intermediate FFA saw six members qualify for national FFA contests, and five traveled to compete in the National FFA Agriscience Fair in Indianapolis. With that, I knew who my interview sources would be – the very impressive students who have grown and excelled here, and the teachers who have guided the way.
We set out to tell this story across print, digital and video, with each medium telling a unique portion of the story while adhering to an overarching theme.
The print article let the way, as the magazine has the broadest reach and is distributed to all FFA members. That story focused on how the Waipahu Intermediate chapter plants the seeds and prepares members for eventual success in the Waipahu High School chapter, and highlighted the general ag education ecosystem the FFA advisors have created for success. The article discussed how the chapter found success relatively quickly sent students to the National Agriscience Fair in Indianapolis. The print article was then refreshed for publication on FFA.org.
The video was linked to from the magazine story via smart code and embedded in the website article. It focused on two members who qualified for and traveled to the National Agriscience Fair. They talked about their projects, why the topics captured their attention, how their FFA and ag education experience prepared them, what their outcomes where, and what they learned about themselves in the process.
My thanks to the National FFA Organization for its focus on sharing these diverse ag stories, and to the many FFA members and advisors their willingness to participate in our efforts.
Click here to see “FFA Is One Big Ohana” on the FFA New Horizons website.
