National FFA Convention and Expo links

I'm almost done with my second full day in the news room at the National FFA Convention and Expo. It's been quite the learning experience. Definitely one I'll want to share more about later.

For now, I thought I'd leave you with the blog and convention website links where our articles and blog posts are being published.

The National FFA Convention and Expo Blog

National FFA Convention and Expo Highlights- News

That's all for now!

I'm Here!

I didn't think we'd make it to Indianapolis today, but thankfully we are here safe and sound. I am currently sitting in the lobby of a super nice hotel (why is it that all the nice hotels restrict their free wi-fi to the lobby?) catching up on some school correspondence and relaxing a bit before this crazy week begins. It's been a long day, so I am looking forward to bedtime. I think it'll come soon for me tonight.

Let me back track a bit.

Last night (rather, morning) I didn't get to sleep until 1 a.m. and this morning began at 4 a.m. The girl I was riding with planned on picking me up at 5:30 a.m. this morning but 5:30 came and went. Then 6 came, then 7 and then 8. No Alyssa.

My mom texted me at 5:30 a.m. to see if we were on the road, and when I said "no," she said, "ok, I'm on my way." I would just like to publicly announce that I have the best mom in the world. It's because of her we made it here.

You see when I finally got a hold of Alyssa, I learned her morning didn't go as planned either. We both woke to rain, but Alyssa additionally woke to a flat tire. Her landlord helped her get a spare on, but there was no way we could drive a car with a donut anywhere further than a tire shop, and those don't open until 8 or 9 a.m. We could take my car, but I've been having trouble with the oil and brake fluid levels. After a consultation with Dad, we decided it wasn't worth taking the risk of blowing a gasket and ending up stranded on the side of I-70 somewhere.

Momma to the rescue! She pulled into my condo at 8:30, we loaded up the van and hit the road. She stayed awake the whole time and let Alyssa and I take naps so we'd be rested for our adventure. We'd already made the call to our supervisor, who was extremely understanding. All ended well.

When we got here, we got a glimpse into what we'll be doing this week. Alyssa's internship seems really awesome- she is doing photo essay stories, and then I'm doing a more traditional reporting internship. I'm on the career success beat, so I'll be spending a lot of time in the Career Expo looking for stories. It sounds like we'll have lots of opportunities to be published, so I'm looking forward to what's ahead. A little nervous, but definitely excited.

The only free internet is in the lobby, so I don't know that I'll be doing a lot of personal blogging but I'll try to let you know where my stories end up.

New and Exciting Experiences

I've had a lot of adventures recently, and tomorrow marks the beginning of another. At 4 a.m. tomorrow morning I'm headed to Indianapolis, Indiana, for orientation to the National FFA Convention news room. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. 

I'm not sure I'll have much time to post about any of my experiences while I'm there, but I'll be sure to catch you up when I get back. 

In the mean time, I've had the opportunity to experience a lot of really fun and exciting things. 

Here's a little picture run down of what I've been up to:

My sister, a high school freshman, is in band so she's been busy every weekend competing at different band festivals. One weekend when I went home, she marched in Carrolton's Band Days, so I went to watch. She's the clarinet player in the center above.

Last weekend, I went to visit the Coons. The fall colors were beautiful so Kathryn and I decided to take pictures of the cows and their calves. Precious moments out in the field were everywhere to be captured. 

And last weekend Kathryn and my two friends who are international students from China came home with me. Missouri Days was going on, so I thought it'd be a great opportunity to show them the exciting times in a small town. 

We also introduced them to several American foods such as donuts, as seen below, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, meatballs and macaroni and cheese, curly fries, bar-b-qued turkey legs and quesadillas. 

Missouri Days is all about the band festival, vendors and food. Below, Julie and Sophie look at Americana crafts and decorations.

Dad hitched up the wagon to the tractor and we took a little hay-less ride around the farm. It was fun to show and explain the typical American agriculture system, and it was interesting to learn about how things are similar and different in China.

It's interesting to view your home culture through the eyes of someone who didn't grow up with that culture. I had never realized how much Americans love fried and sweet foods, nor our obsession over wanting to be royal! 

Sunday afternoon we sat around the table and discussed our cultures, how they are similar and what makes them different. It was great to get an international perspective- and to have that perspective come directly from someone rather than just reading or hearing about it. Each group realized how much movies play a role in how we view other cultures, and sometimes the movie portrayals are right but often they are exaggerated. 

It's been a great couple of weeks, but the busyness is just getting going. 

I'm off to my last class for the week. It's multimedia and our guest speakers are explaining what the next few years will look like as we choose a journalistic focus area. It should be enlightening for sure!

A Trip to the Theater- American Meat

I sat in the Missouri Theater Thursday night surrounded by several of my ag friends. We were curious, and perhaps a little nervous, about what was about to take place.

American Meat, the documentary billed as a pro-farmer look at chicken, cattle, and hog production in the U.S., came to town.

Several of us felt it was important to go to the screening. Personally, I wanted to see how agriculture was portrayed to the public this time. I hoped it wouldn’t be another Food Inc.

I shiver at the thought of the biased Food Inc. film, and get frustrated when people watch it and think that’s the whole story. It hurts me, and I have hoped for a food production film with more complexity.

I had my doubts about this being it, but I was hopeful.

My doubts increased when I discovered the restaurant Chipotle was involved. Remember their commercial last spring? That was an automatic bias in my mind. Plus, a look at their other sponsors, partners and production crew will also show their bias.

I went in skeptical but tried very hard to keep my mind open. And, I must say—I was pleasantly surprised.

Now, I still have my qualms about the film, but I’ll get to those later.

First, I appreciated the filmmakers. I believe they were genuine, and I feel they did their best to put together what they saw as a complete picture. Was it a complete picture? I'd argue not, but I see this as a genuine attempt rather than complete propaganda (though there was a definite bias and a message being pushed). 

Before the film, the director expressed his appreciation for all of America’s farmers and recognized them for their hard work. The crowd gave a round of applause, which was very meaningful. At the end, the director made a point to say working on the film he learned a lot about agriculture and realized there is no "evil" agriculture. It's not a black and white situation. All farmers work hard and are often taken for granted. Now that's a message I believe in!

The director also related the story of how the documentary came to be, and when they began to look into commercial agriculture realized they knew nothing and sought out information from PETA. Now I'm sure you can imagine PETA was more than happy to help, and sent their undercover video footage. When the director started editing that footage into the original film, he got a funny feeling and stopped because he had never talked to those producers and was seeing all this secondhand. From there, he decided not to include any undercover footage and instead talk to all producers. I definitely appreciate that. 

   

The filmmakers did a good job of capturing the hard-working, family-animal-and-land-loving personalities of the traditional producers. I find it important to show the people behind the food, and American Meat did that to an extent. 

A conventional chicken farmer and hog farmer were interviewed, and their personalities, joys and struggles shone through. The importance of family and tradition was presented, and the producers got to explain why they do what they do.

The hog farmer recently added an organic sector to his production facilities, which was especially interesting and revealing look at the organic industry. We got a look into what an organic hog operation looks like, and the challenges of this particular production method.

My biggest complaint of the conventional section was that it wasn’t long enough. There was no conventional beef producer spotlighted, and more time was spent on the negative than the positive. I’m not saying the negative shouldn’t have been shown, I’m just saying more time should have spent on them and other conventional producers to give the public a better idea of what it’s really like.

Most of the movie focused on “grass-based systems,” and featured Joel Salatin. Salatin’s got some really interesting ideas and systems in place. His chicken processing system looks very similar to what we do, and he also produces pork, eggs and beef, along with a few other products not really mentioned in the film.

Salatin’s operation is very successful, and people from all over buy their meat/animal products. Salatin’s Polyface also supplies all the pork for a local Chipotle.

Salatin is very passionate about what he does, and he goes around speaking about his ideas (he has 20 full-time employees to take care of the farm while he’s gone).

At one point in the movie, Salatin said there shouldn't have to be any confinement operations. The crew put some statistics together to decide we have enough pasture land to produce enough food for the U.S. The problem, they said, was a lot more people would need to farm, so they continued on to show people (mostly from the cities) who want to get involved.

So here is where my biggest critiques come in.

• The inference that all farms in the U.S. could realistically be like Salatin’s can definitely be argued, but none of those arguments were acknowledged or even hinted at.

• Exports were mentioned, but they were downplayed. They were discussed only in the context of exports decreasing, which may be true (this year especially because of the drought), but I don’t think $137.4 billion (total U.S. ag exports last year) is an insignificant amount.

• People employed in agriculture but not directly farmers were not included at all. I think it’s a mistake to view agriculture, including meat production, as just farming. Yes, farming is the cornerstone and production is what everything goes back to, but what about those in service, medical, business management and economic roles? Along those same lines, what about the many people employed by larger companies? Premium Standard Farms is the large pork producer in our area, they employ a lot of people in our area and the taxes they pay greatly support the county’s school district. That’s something never mentioned in the movies.

• And still, small and medium sized conventional farms (not connected to larger companies) were not included. 

No, this was not a perfect portrayal (though I admit, "perfect" is a pretty high standard). It had its obvious bias and used "facts" which could easily be disputed and the "other side" was completely ignored. But overall the complexity of this film was at a much higher level than Food Inc.

After the movie was a panel discussion. An economist, rural sociologist, president of the Pork Producers, president of Niman Ranch and the director answered a series of questions. I felt like this is where more layers of information could be found, which would balance out any bias found in the film. Unfortunately by the time the movie was over it was 9 p.m. and a lot of kids needed to leave (including myself). So, they left with the information the film presented and didn't hear the information from the experts. 

So, American Meat was a lot better than I'd expected. It was not offensive like Food Inc., and I think it could be a great starting point for conversation. 

I'm still hoping for an ag production film showing the conventional side of things more complexly, but I'm afraid I may have to wait a long time for that one. 

FFA Fruit and Strawberry Hill Farms Time

I can't believe it's October already! I talked to Mom earlier today and she said it's time to sell FFA fruit. This is my sister's freshman year, so she was heading out to do the rounds.

I miss those days of traveling around to neighbors, friends and family selling fruit for the annual FFA fundraiser. This chilly air brings back memories of my four years of doing the rounds.

Fruit selling was an excuse for me to go and talk to the people I might have seen often but rarely had long conversations with. I've always liked to hear peoples' stories about the past and what's going on now (hmmm, sounds like a good trait for a journalist!). Plus, the money raised went towards funding all the leadership and ag education opportunities we got involved with through the year. Win-win situation!

My senior year, I was in the class that put the fundraiser together. We brought in several fundraising companies to give us sales pitches, chose which companies we were going to sell from, motivated each class to sell, and then took care of all the orders and money.

It was a busy, busy ordeal, and what an experience! It was difficult and I must admit I was glad when we were done, but I honestly think I learned the most real-world skills through that one experience than I did in any other class or project. I learned to be extremely detail-oriented, which helped me later on in my internship this summer.

This fall I'm not out selling fruit, but I am learning valuable skills for the future and talking with people.

In my Multimedia class I've discovered I can put a video together, and it's actually kind of fun. I'm not going to neglect my pen and paper, but if there was a story that would be better in pictures and audio I feel confident I could put something together.

I've been working with Strawberry Hill Farms, just south of Columbia. The owners go to the church I've gotten involved with down here, and they have been really great about helping me get my projects done.

Strawberry Hill Farms has a pretty neat story. Gary and Joyce Sapp started the business in 1980, and they passed it off to their son and daughter-in-law a few years ago.

Joyce actually grew up nearby on a century farm her parents still live on. The land Strawberry Hill Farms is on was actually "the farm next door." For my next class project, an audio sound clip, I'm hoping we can focus on this aspect.

The farm started with a U-Pick strawberry patch, but it was the greenhouse operation that caught on. Right now the big seller is mums, pumpkins and gourds, but in spring there will be a wide variety of flowers and bedding plants. Reminds me of my floriculture contest days!

So far, I've done a short video spotlighting Joyce Sapp and her love of plants, a TV-Style video covering a hayride Strawberry Hill Farms hosted for their church and 3 photo series on their products and the challenge of our recent frost. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the century farm, and hearing more about the people behind the farm.