The Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s Raising Hope program is investing $125,000 into grants for FFA programs across the state. Officials said the funds, which will be dispersed in $5,000 and $2,000 allotments to different chapters, aim to help teach FFA students about important aspects of farm safety.
Sheldon McKinney, Executive Director of the Kentucky FFA Foundation, said farming is a dangerous job.
“It’s dangerous physically, working with equipment and livestock and it’s important that people are aware and take all the safety precautions that they can to keep themselves safe. It’s also a very mentally difficult job, and it is one of the top careers that end in suicide,” said McKinney. “Which is probably shocking to some people, but farmers have an abnormally high rate of suicide.”
McKinney said teaching students about these topics can better equip them for crisis situations when they are older. She said some chapters have already been teaching the curriculum and have seen massive success.
Sheldon McKinney’s husband, Bradley McKinney, works at one of those chapters. He is the agriculture instructor and supervisor of the FFA chapter at Rowan County High School. McKinney said the KDA focuses farm education around three areas, AG education, FFA, and SAE - which stands for Supervised Agriculture Experience program.
“There’s the three courses to that three-circle model that we put together in the AG department that we correlate all the way together for a student to get a true agriculture education experience. It teaches them volunteerism. We have the motto of “learning to do, doing to earn, earning to live, and living to serve”, and I feel like that motto goes right along with those tasks that the KDA has tasked FFA to do,” said McKinney.
Bradley McKinney said Rowan County will likely not be applying for these grants, as they already have curriculum in place to teach students these topics. He said he hopes that those who do receive the funds will use it to help better their FFA programs. More information is available on the KDA website.