If you have ever spent time on one the thousands of family farms in Minnesota, chances are you have interacted with someone impacted by their time as a Future Farmers of America member.
For FFA members, the blue corduroy jacket symbolizes the importance of not only agriculture, but also the importance of leadership skills and the FFA's motto, "Living to serve."
Not all FFA members have their own blue jackets, which are worn by student members at various state and national events and competitions throughout the year.
Crystal Farms, based in Minneapolis, recognized an opportunity to donate more than three dozen jackets to students through their philanthropic initiative, Midwest Farms Forever.
"About two years ago we were looking for ways to support the community. We're a Midwest company and we want to support the Upper Midwest and the areas and communities in which we live in work," said Crystal Farms president Tim Bratland. "One of those that came to our attention was the FFA."
According to Bratland, FFA is playing an important role in the future of farming in Minnesota. Earlier this year the number of Minnesota dairy farms had dropped below 2,000, less than half the total from just ten years earlier.
"We're all about having a high quality cheese product and that really starts with high quality milk. When you see the popular press, you realize that the family farm, the small dairy farm, is declining," Bratland said. "We wanted to do something to help support the family dairy farm and we thought one of the best ways we could do that was to become involved with the FFA. Many of these young students that grew up on farms want to stay in farming, but they want to have the education and the experiences they need to be able to manage a 21st century farm and we want to support those young students."
In total 38 coats were purchased for students to wear.
"I can't say that I grew up on a family farm, but my mom and dad were both raised on small family farms in southeastern North Dakota, my dad was a Future Farmer of America," added Bratland. "I remember seeing the coats when I was growing up and obviously my grandparents and some of my relatives are still involved in farming."
Bratland believes their involvement with the FFA goes beyond the blue jackets.
"I think there's students that would love to continue third, fourth, or fifth generation farming, but they need to have the knowledge and expertise to be able to run these farms in today's world. The small thing that we can do at Crystal Farms to help is to provide support to FFA so that they can take classes, or help on SAE grants which are supervised agriculture experience classes that help them get experience in certain areas of farming."
The FFA jacket donations didn't go unnoticed.
"We got personal cards back from a lot of the students that received the coats just thanking us. They had wanted these coats and were wearing a sibling's coats, but now they had their own coat. It was really cool to see that and it also showed just the quality of these students that would take the time in today's world to send a handwritten thank you note to us for these coats. We are looking forward to doing that again in 2024 and hope we can get out another 38 or 40 coats to FFA students."