Help make sure kids don’t go hungry this summer.

FFA members, there’s a problem. And, we believe that you can help solve it.

During the school year, many children receive free and reduced-price breakfast and lunch through the USDA’s School Breakfast and National School Lunch Programs.

But, what happens when school lets out?

Lack of nutrition during the summer months may set up a cycle for poor performance once school begins again. Hunger is one of the most severe roadblocks to the learning process, and may also make children more prone to illness and other health issues. The Summer Food Service Program is designed to fill that nutrition gap and make sure children can get the nutritious meals they need.

FFA Partnership Grows Chickens for Hunger Relief

Reblogged from Unity College Sustainability Monitor:

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During Spring Break, an unusual package arrived in the mail.  It was a shoe-box sized parcel, with several air holes on each side.  It filled the post office with a surprising amount of noise for its size.  Chirping to be precise.  That chirping heralded the beginning of a Spring project and an exciting new partnership.

In February of this year, the…

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Unity FFA visits Waldo County Tech FFA

Reblogged from Unity College Sustainability Monitor:

From Shayne:

A group of Unity College students who are part of the College’s FFA club visited the FFA club of Waldo County Technical Center to collaborate on the current Pastured Poultry for Food Security project that was made possible by the National FFA Food for All Grant. The meeting started out by playing the icebreaker game  “Have You Seen My Goat” so that students from both schools would get familiar and  be open for discussion later in the meeting, then we moved on to a presentation by the Unity College FFA members that informed Waldo County FFA students about the project, some basic information on pastured poultry, and general chicken knowledge.  

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We are so proud of all of our Food for All grant recipients! Here's another great project being conducted with Living to Serve funds. If you're interested in apply for a Living to Serve grant, check out the webpage for information about availability and deadlines.

Food for Thought: FFA chapter hosts farm-to-table benefit dinner

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FFA advisor Alice Dubois of Ponchatoula, Louisiana recently partnered with New Orleans’ chef Dickie Brennon to create a farm-to‐ table benefit dinner.

The ‘Food for Thought’ dinner was held at the Le Fleur de Lis Restaurant in Ponchatoula, Louisiana on February 24. Ten percent of the proceeds were donated to Our Daily Bread Food Bank. The rest went to the school’s Agriscience department and will be used to conduct additional service learning projects.

The produce for the dinner came from the Ponchatoula FFA chapter’s gardens, where the students grow vegetables, strawberries and herbs in both spring and summer gardens. Their excess produce is regularly donated to local homeless shelters, food banks, and senior citizen apartment complexes.

We Believe… in Innovation

Careers in agriculture sometimes get a bad rap in our society. Many people see farming and the pursuits related to it as “quaint” or “rustic.” They often say that farmers and ranchers live “the simple life.”

But the truth is that, every day, farmers and agriculturists are tackling and solving some of the world’s most complex problems;  and, these problems are often related to the very survival and well-being of all humankind.

Take Norman Borlaug, for example. Dr. Borlaug was born on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, where as a child he often pestered his parents and grandparents with questions. He’d often wonder aloud why the grass was greener in some areas of the farm than others.

This curiosity led him to become an expert in plant pathology. His expertise eventually helped him to prevent mass, worldwide famine in the 1960s.

Dr. Borlaug was tasked through the Rockefeller Foundation to take a job in Mexico trying to help farmers improve their crops. Upon seeing the desperate situation Mexican farmers were in at the time, he wrote in a letter to his wife:

Need a service project for your FFA chapter? Look no further.

Here’s a cool program for FFA members to get their chapters and communities involved in…

Nearly one in four children (more than 17 million U.S. children) go hungry at some point throughout the year. Child Hunger Ends Here is on a mission to change that, and they are offering a free innovative project-based learning activity that engages students grades 7-12 in learning about and fighting child hunger.

The program offers a 10-step curriculum guides students through the entire process and along the way they learn about child hunger and build a cause marketing plan that engages their entire community to fight the growing problem. A national contest with great prizes is available for those chapters who exceed the most.

The curriculum helps define what child hunger is and leads students through current national hunger prevention efforts. The class then engages in a child hunger-fighting initiative by organizing into team to explore cause marketing and create their cause marketing plan. The campaign has two goals: to fight child hunger and educate the public on the food insecurity issue.

The curriculum pulls together a variety of resources including hunger statistics from Feeding America and current programs such as Schools Fight Hunger.

Enrolled classrooms/groups receive classroom/group access to USA TODAY’s electronic edition for project research. Winning team members and teacher each receive an iPad 2 and a winning classroom a celebratory luncheon. Contest rules apply.

Interested yet? Visit www.usatodayeducate.com/childhungerendshere to register your chapter. Finally, help us keep track of which FFA chapters are involved by entering code “FFA2011” after your school/chapter name in the online enrollment form.

FFA GO: Sunday July 31, 2011

Last Leg of our Adventure

This weekend is the last leg of our adventure in beautiful Rwanda. Friday we were given the chance to present our recommendations and comments to CRS based on our time in the country.   Some examples include continuing to support farmer field school programs, partnerships, SILC programs, cooperatives and bio-intensive agriculture practices. We also encouraged them to explore possibilities of exporting cassava flour internationally; roasting coffee domestically; increased transportation; treadle pumps; bio-digesters; and increased livestock.  Based on previous experience, research and education, we were able to recommend and support these ideas with sound rationale. We were very impressed with everything CRS and partner organizations are doing in this country and are anxious to see how their agriculture, technology and overall livelihoods improve over the next few centuries.

FFA GO: Africa – July 28, 2011

SILC Groups

By Team A (Brett, Jamie, Victoria and Jeff) 

SILC stands for Savings and Investment Leading Communities.  Today we were able to meet with two SILC groups of villagers working together to save money in order to better their lives.   The first group had 41 members who saved $400 toward a savings community and $100 to a social fund.  The members in this group meet weekly to discuss challenges, savings and investments.  By saving money together as a community instead of as individual families, they are able to buy more livestock, agricultural inputs and fund small businesses.  It was interesting to listen to the farmers concerns, rationale for loans and questions. 

FFA GO: Africa – July 28, 2011

Processing Plant and Sweet Potato Fields

By Team B (Tom, Ashley and Elizabeth)

We begin our last day working with farmers in a field in the Northern Province with a group of women sweet potato farmers. We traversed a river, for real, to the multiplication plot. We saw how the women carried the manure from their homes to the field in the marsh area, applied it to the ground and then formed rows of soil. Finally they add the sweet potato cuttings to produce the tuber/root. The multiplication plot is full of rows 80 centimeters apart with the cuttings/veins staged 30 centimeters apart. They are kept there to grow for two months before they are moved to the production plot. They plant maize or cabbage after they move the plants farther up the hill, as the rainy season floods the area and maize can handle it more than the potatoes.

FFA GO: Africa – July 27, 2011

Q & A with Farmers

By Team A (Brett, Jamie, Victoria and Jeff) 

As we pulled up to the CRS headquarters today, staffers greeted us all with warm smiles as we made our way up the stairs to the second floor balcony of the cream-colored building.  Joslyn, an intern for CRS, had constructed a presentation for us about her research and recommendations on Gender Equality in Rwanda in the agriculture sector.  Numerous intriguing thoughts were brought forth including the equality of labor in the fields, farmer schools and also the households.  Conclusions were that many spouse relationships are very balanced with some tendencies of different work for different genders in the Rwandan countryside.