What about the kiddos?

The majority of my blog has been about how teenagers are involved in agriculture and what the FFA structure looks like/how it allows so much participation. This is no where near the limit to what young adults can participate in regarding the world of agriculture. My family had been mildly involved in Agriculture throughout my life. We had some family members running cattle operations, many friends who ran crop productions, and others who simply had agriculture based jobs. I’ve talked before about how I first got involved in agriculture through 4-H which is how many children become involved so young. Children can start joining as early as they’d like but cannot participate in some things until they reach a certain age. For example, they have to be at least 9 years old before they are allowed to start raising and showing large animals in livestock shows. But kids who are younger than 9 are allowed to show small animals like chickens and rabbits. 4-H isn’t only showing animals, there are many more activities to be involved in and anything can be made into a group or club as long as there is a parent willing to be the leader and kids who want to participate. My group had many clubs outside of our livestock groups, including: cooking, arts and crafts, outdoor adventure, and even shop. Now these may not seem very agriculture based and for some it was definitely a stretch but they were mostly about getting the kids involved in something that would teach them something new, get them outside, or even just to make friends.

The best part about 4-H was that everything was entirely based on the kids and how they wanted to be involved. The monthly meeting were completely ran my a group young officers that the club had elected. Throughout the meetings we would discuss what we had done in the past month and what events would be happening over the next month. We would decide as a group what events we wanted to continue participating in and even bring up new events where help was needed or where we could do our part helping out the community. I did more community service at 11 years old than many kids did before they were 15 and it was all based on things my 4-H group participated in together or things my family was involved in. It was incredibly rewarding and I learned a lot from being involved at such a young age.

Advertisement