Even though most students attend the annual State Fair of Texas that runs through Oct. 23 for the carnival rides, fried foods and fun shows, the school’s FFA club will be attending Tuesday for a different reason.  

“We participate in the Agricultural Awareness Day, which is the day where we also participate in the community service activity,” agriculture teacher Julie Anderson said. “Students go to the State Fair and utilize the things that they have at the State Fair to learn about agriculture, from livestock and agricultural commodities, to a lot of different areas of agriculture.”

The annual trip to the State Fair means something special for many of the students who visit.

“Going to the State Fair means a lot to many FFA members because it shows that a larger and broader spectrum of people care about the decreasing population of farmers that are feeding an increasing population in the USA, so it sort’ve shows that a lot more people are getting into FFA,” FFA secretary Kirk Niekamp said. “It is so much fun, we get to skip a day of school and spend the day with the officers, spend the day with each other. The FFA members get to spend time with each other and meet new people, and we get to meet new people all over the state of Texas and just become friends with them”.

Visiting the State Fair with FFA brings about a different experience for club members.

“It’s different for FFA because we’re the next generation of farmers, we’re the next people that are going to be feeding 9 million people,” Niekamp said. “So when we go and we get to experience Ag. awareness it just sorta pushes us to love what we’re doing even more, and keep going into just the fields that we love to do.”

With the State Fair in its second week, excitement is building up for the FFA members who are attending this year’s fair on Tuesday.

“I’m really excited, it’s really neat,” Anderson said. “The agriculture awareness day is really amazing cause there’s thousands of people, FFA members, that come from all over the state of Texas to participate. Kids get a really good grasp and they get to see a lot of agricultural commodities and livestock that they wouldn’t necessarily see in Frisco, Texas.”