Eyes to the Future

On Tuesday of World Dairy Expo (WDE) you’ll notice a youthful charge as droves of FFA members arrive to immerse themselves in dairy industry culture.

Somewhere around 3,000 students from 150 FFA chapters attend Expo each year. As you’d expect, most are from Wisconsin, but also represented are chapters in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Ohio.

“FFA attendance is important to World Dairy Expo because it is an opportunity to expose youth to the dairy industry,” says Mark Zidon, a professor of agricultural education at the University of Wisconsin– Platteville. For the past 28 years, he’s served as superintendent of the FFA contests held in conjunction with WDE. “This is an opportunity for World Dairy Expo to educate the next generation of agriculturalists about the industry.”

Around 800 FFA students participate in contests including dairy cattle judging, showmanship, forage management and dairy Expo and FFA team up to develop future dairy industry leaders and educate tomorrow’s consumersproducts evaluation. Seminars are also held throughout the day.

“Taking part in the contests is a great opportunity for students to show off their skills,” says Arlaina Meyer, ag teacher and FFA adviser at Cumberland High School in Cumberland, Wis. She’s been bringing her students to WDE every year for the past 16 years. “And being here reinforces the things they’ve been learning in the classroom about different segments of the dairy industry.”

FFA students also get involved through a scavenger hunt, put on by Wisconsin FFA and Expo staff. Students receive text messages containing questions about World Dairy Expo and the dairy industry. After answering 10 questions correctly, they receive a FFA/World Dairy Expo T-shirt. In 2017, 1,500 T-shirts were handed out.

Some exhibitors in the WDE Trade Show also offer educational opportunities for FFA students as a way connect with students at the show. Some examples include:

• The World Forage Analysis Superbowl teamed up with Mycogen Seeds to sponsor a quiz about the dairy industry and forages. Students who took the quiz could win a free ice cream from the GEA Ice Cream Stand. Students could also look at entries and talk with experts about forages.

• The National Dairy FARM Program and National Beef Quality Assurance Program invited FFA members to take part in a dairy cattle body condition and hygiene evaluation exercise. Winners could win a “prize basket of goodies” including a Yeti Rambler.

Many exhibitors also run promotions to attract FFA members to their booths. Pop sockets, which can be used as a cellphone stand, were given away by Paul Mueller Company, a manufacturer of stainless steel milk cooling and storage equipment. “It was pretty popular,” says Kellie Logue, office coordinator at Mueller’s company’s headquarters in Springfield, Mo. “We brought 250 of them to hand out and in less than an hour, they were all gone.”

Connecting with the FFA members is benefi cial for Mueller in several ways, Logue says. “Every year, we have some students tell us their parents are getting ready to update equipment on the home farm. They’ll ask all kinds of questions about our products and then tell us they plan to go home and tell Mom and Dad what they learned about us. You never know what’s going to lead to a sale.”

Interest in future employment also brings students to the booth, Logue says. “They want to know about the company, what we do in our jobs, how we got into those jobs and what kind of education they need to get a position with us down the road.”

Helping students learn more about careers in the dairy industry and agriculture is a major reason ag teachers bring their students to Expo, according to Cheryl Zimmerman, executive director of Wisconsin FFA. “A lot of the kids are already looking ahead to the day when they’ll have full-time jobs,” she says. “Who knows what kind of interest might be sparked by just being here (at Expo) and talking to some of the exhibitors?”

Even for students who aren’t interested in a career in agriculture fi nd the trip to Expo worthwhile, she adds. “We’re seeing more kids in FFA who don’t come from a farm,” Zimmerman says. “We can’t assume that they have a basic understanding of what goes on in the dairy industry. Bringing them to WDE and educating them about agriculture increases the likelihood that they’ll become informed consumers. It’s something we need to be doing a lot more of.”