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Kentucky FFA awarding $60K in grants to schools’ ag efforts

By JORDAN STRICKLER

FRANKFORT, Ky. — The Kentucky FFA will award more than $60,000 in grant money to schools across the Bluegrass State for agricultural education programs.

Thirteen of these grants are Ag Achiever grants to help ag teachers purchase new equipment or teaching resources, make modifications to existing equipment or facilities, or implement innovative programming. New this year were two Agricultural Innovation grants, which were $10,000 each and are more geared to a “big-picture” focus.

“Effective agriculture programs are locally driven by the interests of students and the needs of the community,” said Sheldon McKinney, executive director of the Kentucky FFA Foundation. “Ag Achiever grants are a way to put money toward projects that are working for folks. We’ve offered smaller grants for a long time, and those make a difference.

“But with (the Agricultural Innovation grants), we wanted to be able to go beyond meeting basic needs for a program. These grants are allowing us to say, ‘What can move the needle for programs or students?’”

One place taking advantage of its Innovation grant is LaRue County High School, where Chris Thomas and his students are in the process of creating an aquaponics farm. Aquaponics combines raising vegetables hydroponically with growing fish – it’s a system of food production that has been around for quite some time and continues to gain popularity.

The LaRue County program will create a processing facility where produce and fish harvested will be prepared for the entire county’s school system. “We started with a 100-gallon water trough. Next year, when we get to full scale, we’ll be at about a 450-gallon fish tank and have the ability to grow roughly 8,000 plants at a time,” said Thomas.

He said aside from the produce, growing skills and work ethic will be important for the students. “This gives them a project and something to be interested in. It teaches them how to raise their own food. They’re working on reducing the food mileage, as well as learning about value-added products.

“With aquaponics, we are doing something that no one else in the region is doing. So not only can we create local foods, but we can have fresh food and food reduce miles. They also did all of the grant work, so they are learning many more things here than just farming.”

Thomas Nelson High School’s agriculture department will use its Agricultural Innovation funding to help develop its 40-acre land lab on the school’s campus. Ag teacher John Hammond has designed the project as a class that allows students to come up with ideas for different sections of their Legacy Land Lab.

Using grant funds, they plan to implement many projects designed and led by the students, including raised garden beds that incorporate technology called a FarmBot – an open-source precision agriculture farming tool – reclaiming unusable land through a variety of management practices, establishing an orchard, introducing a small goat herd, and adding a flock of laying hens.

The Kentucky FFA grants are funded by a wide segment of the agriculture community, including the Kentucky Farm License Plate, or “Ag Tag,” program and Universal Leaf for the Ag Achiever grants, and funds raised at the Foundation’s annual gala for the Ag Innovation grants.

Ag Tag donations in fiscal 2017 grew to nearly $630,000, which was the highest amount in the history of the program and a 14 percent increase over the 2016 fiscal year.

“As we go through life, we realize most big ideas need three things to happen: time, effort, and money,” said FFA Foundation Chair Adam Hinton. “Through our work with FFA members and ag programs, we know they have some really creative ideas. Often they have the time and effort to be able to execute these ideas, and if they just had the necessary money, we believe something really special could happen.”

5/9/2019