Iowa Secretary of Ag meets with WACO FFA

WAYLAND — Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig paid a visit to WACO High School Thursday morning, Sept. 5, for a meeting with the school’s FFA chapter. The stop was part of a six-county trip through Southeast Iowa, according to media alerts from the office.

Students had an informal discussion with the state official about a wide variety of topics, including the chapter’s Land Lab project, cover crops, a planned new ag building at the school, and highly pathogenic avian influenza. The group also covered off-topic issues like the four-day school week, Naig’s career path, and the school’s football and volleyball outlook for the season.

“We have a priority at the department that we have to be thinking about the next generation,” Naig said in a brief interview after the meeting. “This helps me to learn about some of the things that are working here and some of the ideas, and we can help network folks and share those models with other schools … and I’m always impressed. These are young people that can sit and have a great conversation, ask questions, you ask questions, they’ve got ideas.”

  Buy Photo

Naig said he was especially impressed with the school’s sizable Land Lab program, in which students raise their own crops using seeds they buy through FFA, and sell them at market rates for their own revenue after harvest. WACO’s chapter is using the land this year to grow about 30 acres of row crops, according to students.

The secretary said he was also consistently impressed with how far agricultural practice and education had come since his own time in high school.

“It’s interesting to sit, as a former FFA student, to sit here 20-plus years later,” he said. “Here’s the thing we know about ag: it’s always changing. Whether that’s some of the challenges we face from a weather, market standpoint, or this year we’ve got hi-path Avian Influenza that’s impacting us in a different way, you always have to be able to adjust and adapt … at its core, what ag programs like this can do is give kids of all backgrounds some exposure to that.”

  Buy Photo

WACO Teacher Ethan Fetzer is the school’s FFA sponsor. He said the meeting came together after a longtime friend working at the secretary of agriculture’s office reached out a few weeks prior, knowing the state official would be in town.

Beyond simply being an unusual experience for high school students, Fetzer said Thursday’s meeting met a variety of FFA goals.

“I just want to get them comfortable talking in front of various audiences, because that’s an important skill,” he said. “I also like students to see all facets of different careers within agriculture, and working for the government or in the department of ag and land stewardship, there’s plenty of career opportunities there.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com