I Believe In Integrity

I believe in Integrity...

Integrity is an extremely important value to me. In order to gain the trust and respect of other people, you must base your actions and decisions on honesty, compassion and respect for others.

Part of integrity is doing the right thing, even when no body is looking.

As integrity relates to leadership, if you are going to be an effective leader, you must gain the trust of those you are leading. You must be honest with them and genuinely care about them as people.

Without genuine integrity our world falls apart.

I Believe in Innovation

"I Believe in Innovation!"

Ok so obviously innovation is important to today's society. I mean, think about that smart phone in your hand, the tablet in your bag or the computer that you are reading this on, they all came about through innovation right? Right! Innovation is vital to the world of technology.

But, have you thought about how agriculturalists have been innovative throughout the years?

Think about it... there is innovation everywhere!

Today we use tractors instead of plows. We even have GPS onboard some of our equipment.

Now, I've never actually used any heavy-duty farm equipment but that leads into my next point.

Agriculturalists today are not just farmers. Agriculture now involves everything from aquaculture to biotechnology and more! The amount of innovation in our industry is incredible! Biotechnologists are able to track genes inside plants to the point where they can manipulate them to give a desired effect (ie pesticide resistance, pest resistance and more!)

And the innovation is far from over! We are still discovering new things everyday and coming up with more effective and more sustainable practices in agriculture and the industry is continuing to evolve through the innovation of progressive agriculturalists.

I Believe in Service

"I Believe in Service!"

I believe in Service because as members of any society, we should want to help each other out and give back. Service can take so many different forms. Anything from cleaning up trash on your school's campus to sitting with that kid who always sits alone at that lunch table way far away from everyone else.

You may not always enjoy serving while you are in the process but that's the whole concept, putting your wants and needs on hold for the wants and needs of others. If you give your time and effort to make someone else's life even the slightest bit easier or more convenient, then you have served them and you have made a difference.

I would encourage everyone to go throughout their day-to-day lives thinking about how they might serve even just one person today. See how much of a difference that makes in your life as well as the lives that you will touch.

I Beleive in Agricultural Education

Well this is Day One of the FFA Week 2012 I Believe Challenge and today's blog topic: Agricultural Education. So obviously I have a few things to write since I have chosen Agricultural Education as my career path. OK, Here it goes.

"I Believe in Agricultural Education"

Agricultural Education is a very important topic in my life. I believe that agriscience teachers have a larger impact on students' lives than any other teacher does. These teachers spend more time investing in students' lives than most other teachers. Everything from the early morning drive to competitions to the late night open houses and parent-teacher nights.

Agricultural education offers so much more than most education programs. The FFA's motto says it all "Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve." Doing to Learn is exactly what agricultural education is all about. Rather than sitting sitting in a classroom and listening about how to do something, agricultural education offers the opportunity to actually learn by doing.

Agricultural Education is not only based on agriculture but leadership and service as well. A HUGE part of the curriculum centers around the importance of being a leader, following leadership and serving the community. Agricultural Education betters the lives of students and changes them for the better.

Agricultural Education, offers students many different opportunities for learning. Everything is covered from record-keeping, business skills, public speaking, leadership, and of course, agricultural skills.

I believe in Agricultural Education because it is building and shaping our future leaders. It is an important component to our country's education and I will stand behind it 100%.

Happy Arizona Centennial Day!!!

So today Arizona celebrates its centennial. Today our state is 100!!!

To celebrate, I am going to do a blog post about Arizona Agriculture!!!
So here are some fact about Arizona agriculture:

I got these from the "A Look at Arizona Agriculture" fact sheet on the USDA Agriculture in the Classroom website: http://www.agclassroom.org/ The fact sheet can be found here if you would like to look at it.

Ok here we go!

- Arizona grows enough cotton each year to make more than one pair of jeans for every person in
the United States.

- Arizona ranks 2nd nationally in it’s production of cantaloupe & honeydew melons, head & leaf
lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and lemons.

- There are 186,000 milk cows in the state with a yearly milk production of 23,382 pounds per cow. (Wow that is a lot of Milk!)

- The state has, on average, 1,600,000 laying hens which produce over 5.8 billion eggs a year.

- Agriculture is a $9.2 billion industry for the state of Arizona.

- Number of Farms in the State: 15,600

- The top agricultural crop exports are vegetables, hay, cotton, and cottonseed.

- Cattle & calves and dairy goods are Arizona’s most valuable farm products, with cattle & calves
representing 18% of total farm receipts and dairy products 20%.

- Arizona has over 165,000 hogs, and 150,000 head of sheep and lambs.

- Yuma, Arizona is the winter lettuce capitol of the world.

Did you so much about the agricultural industry in Arizona? There's a lot to know!

So show your love for Arizona Agriculturalists on this Valentines/Arizona Centennial Day and everyday!


Source: United States Department of Agriculture: Agriculture in the Classroom http://www.agclassroom.org/

FFA Week Blog Posts

For those of you that don't know: National FFA Week is coming up (February 18th-25th).

With FFA Week coming up, I have found the perfect way to help kick-start my blog!

National FFA has a blogging campaign for bloggers to blog once a day everyday during National FFA Week. I am going to try to take part in this campaign.

So during FFA week I will follow National FFA's schedule and blog about the following topics:


- Saturday, Feb 18 – Agricultural Education
- Sunday, Feb. 19 – Service
- Monday, Feb. 20  - Innovation
- Tuesday, Feb. 21 – Integrity
- Wednesday, Feb. 22 – Growth
- Thursday, Feb. 23 – Respect
- Friday, Feb. 24 – Teamwork
- Saturday, Feb. 25 – Transparency

Hopefully I will be able to stick to it and blog everyday!

Randy Jackson and the FFA?

So, I've been thinking about starting an agricultural blog for a while now and I figured now is as good a time as any. In this blog I plan to address my thoughts, as well as factual research, on different topics in the agricultural world. I've never been much of a blogger so we'll see how this goes.

Ready? Alright here it goes...

A topic I have seen a few FFA members talking about is Randy Jackson's jacket on American Idol featuring a very large and prominent FFA emblem on his shoulder.

 Above: Randy Jackson wearing a jacket displaying an FFA emblem on Fox's "American Idol".

I have a few different trains of thought on this topic...

At first I tended to agree with the side that thinks that this is a blatant misuse of the emblem and he should not have done it. This side tends to be quite angry and presents several opinions on the matter:

• First, these people tend to think that it is obviously a Blatant Misuse of the FFA Emblem
• Some also point out that Randy Jackson doesn't even know what FFA is.
• Some are also upset that he is not representing us well because it is not the most current version of the emblem.

My thoughts?

There are some valid points here. But, we cannot jump to conclusions. We can't just assume that Mr. Jackson doesn't know what FFA is. Would he wear it if he didn't?

Also does it really matter if it is the most current version of the emblem? The one he displayed sports the words "Vocational Agriculture" as opposed to the current "Agricultural Education". Our roots are in agriculture, that emblem is a part of our history, it is part of who we are.

Also is this really misuse of the emblem? Don't get me wrong, I am the first to be upset when an FFA emblem or jacket is being misused but is this misuse? I believe that is for the National FFA Organization to decide. They don't seem to mind, they even posted on their Facebook Page about it.

Some of my final thoughts are: Hey, it's publicity for our great organization. Maybe Mr. Jackson doesn't know what it means but many do, and those who don't may have gone and looked it up afterwards. Being my FFA chapter's reporter I know that one should never look down upon positive publicity.

Anyways, these are just some of the thoughts that I had on this topic. I would love to hear yours in the comments below!

I hope you enjoyed my first post and I will try to keep it up :) Thanks for Reading!