 I'm Jim Miller. I'm one of two agricultural science and technology instructors here at Crater High School. FFA is important to many youth and has the capability of touching a lot more youth through its leadership, development, capabilities, preparing the next generations of leaders for pretty much America. FFA takes in is one component of a three-circle model where we take classroom instruction and then use a student's project through their hands on learning and FFA then is the avenue for them to be able to take and exhibit or demonstrate how well that they've taken and put all those components together. Through the FFA there's many different things a student or a member could do. They have a entrepreneur project where they're raising for example livestock or perhaps they've built a project themselves for resale value but we also have another side of it where is also a work experience where they could have a job or say working at the Grange co-op or maybe they're working for the Glass family farm. So there's really two types of projects they could have both placement and entrepreneurship. The FFA is a national organization that continues to grow every year and in fact in Oregon itself we are continuing to grow to the point where right now we're having difficult time actually keeping the all the ag positions that are being asked for filled in the state. So along with Oregon State and Department of Education we're all working collectively to try and increase those numbers so that we can offer more programs and offer the FFA component to more students across our state. So that's a that's a good problem to have and one of the things we're seeing is that there's a lot more schools that are starting to see the value of the leadership and the entrepreneurism that those components that builds a young person's resume before they leave and go off to college and they're they're desiring that they're wanting that for their schools. I'm a second-generation ag teacher. I was born into an ag teaching family. My father I grew up with my father being an ag instructor and in Hermeson, Oregon and so he was actually my ag teacher. Once entering high school I actually was very involved with FFA from the local district and state level participating in as many career development events as I possibly could. I grew up with a production hay operation that I started and the necessity to be able to feed my own livestock started off with raising sheep both commercial and pure bread and graduated high school and went off to a community college in Blue Mountain with a receiving a degree in ag production and ag business and then went off to University of Idaho to get my degree in agricultural education. I think that agriculture not only is a personal passion but it's also a way of life for for many people. You know there's an old saying that where would we be without agriculture and we would be naked and hungry and there's a lot of truth in that. There's some statistics out right now that states that we're going to have to increase our food supply by the year 2050 by 50% and in order to do that we're going to have to be quite creative in order to achieve that. You know like we just got done speaking with my 101 ag 101 students the United States has the lowest percentage of gross income spent on food and in order for us to continue keeping that at a reasonable cost you know we're going to have to be very efficient and effective in producing our food for America. Well I think one of the elements that's attractive for me is the hard work when a person goes out and they work hard during the day and they're able to see the product of their toil see see their hard work actually turning into something when the when the day is over. You know every day is not always full of successes you're going to have failures from day to day and and great achievements around the corner so for me I think it's one of those inborn fondnesses or love for it a passion for it that I desire and I enjoy and I really like to you know educate the youth that's going through my classroom about how rapidly our agriculture industry is changing you know it's changing from the aspect of technology is one of the biggest things we can all look at it's what we once were doing 20 years ago and farming has completely changed today you know with between GPS and the computer technology that we have between using satellites to help navigate and guide our machinery through the field so that we can be as precise as possible when we're planting our crops to being able to monitor and track where livestock currently are and what are their grazing habits so that we can more efficiently manage our range lands and get our most the maximum potential out of them it's quite amazing how just a simple piece of technology has changed our industry we really don't need that many students to go sit in tractors anymore sure that component is still there but we also have a whole another component of the analyzing data and whiting writing computer programs you know the the whole technology piece of preparing and designing the next generation whether it's from engineers or the actual programmers himself that are writing new technology pieces for us to use business and marketing is certainly has changed and I'm thinking of a local business who recently has just inquired with a younger generation employee about how to market their product and how to address a different consumer because most of us when we grew up our advertising was stemmed around newspapers and magazines and then the internet came into our lives and some of us have turned to Craigslist and so we see this generation that's changing away from the printed paper bound material to the social media component and I think that we're still a few years away from having most of our advertising being perceived through social media however there is a large number of ads and contacts and that ability to connect with the consumer through that avenue of social media is it an easy one for some of us to navigate not necessarily hate to admit it my kids are far more advanced in social media than I am they've grown up embedded in it at this point so while most of us are trying to learn it some have just grown up with it it's almost second nature to them so that's that's an interesting change when we start looking at who are we going to target for a consumer how do we target those consumers how do we speak to those consumers and one of the things that I preach not only to my students and my FFA members but once you put something out there on social media it's out there for good we don't really ever get to take it away so we need to be very careful about those printed items and and the things we do say and and how we are saying them to make sure that our message is being delivered the way we mean it to be delivered you know branding is a component of marketing I think if you look at the National FFA organization they have a pretty significant brand and it's one that is recognizable almost anywhere you go by a lot of people and that brand is for that organization is quite powerful I think when students understand the concepts of branding and have the ability to take and relate or market their own personal things through branding then their success goes up so I think I think branding is very important I also believe that there's some things in regards to branding that consumers need to be more educated about you know really what does this particular brand mean what are they referring to is it genetically modified is it genetically engineered is it all natural beef is it the farm of the free range chicken you know what what are those different brands and what do they really mean in order to achieve that brand you know the those are there's some interesting guidelines out there with all of that and there's some things that you know I don't really know that everybody understands them very well but branding I think is is the future for a lot of different markets absolutely value-added and when we've been doing that for for years how do you how do you add value to any agricultural crop you process a little further you make it more user-friendly for the consumer did we freeze it did we can it is it pre-cooked is it already mixed with other things those are all value-added things so crater FFA was established I believe it was in the late 40s and we were the 14th chapter in the state of Oregon to actually receive a charter for our chapter a man who recently just passed away Leonard Koonsman was our first FFA advisor and started things off he went off to actually be our state FFA advisor for several years historically we've been a multi-person program for over 30 years now and at one time we used to have three ag teachers here and currently we only have two but we also have a very broad program where we cover both the plant science the animal science and the mechanical side of agriculture far as success crater has been very blessed to have had several I'm probably not several I probably go hundreds of state degree recipients and several state officers as well as state and national winning career development teams and I think in the last 20 years there's only been a very small handful for five maybe years in the last 20 that we have not taken a team to national convention to participate so why is that I think there's a couple different reasons why number one I believe that the creative FFA advisors for years have been pretty competitive themselves and with I look at Mrs. Costman and myself we're both very competitive individuals our students thrive off of that and tend to attract competitiveness maybe we even might stem a little competitiveness amongst them and of course the the ball just keeps rolling and and sometimes we just have to keep up with it but no we we've been we've been very fortunate to have had a lot of success with the chapter and been able to provide some very unique and interesting learning opportunities for so many students through that success we travel back and forth across the state of Oregon it's a very diverse state and that's that's one thing that we get to offer a lot of kids you know to the top end of it being able to take kids back to Edinburgh Scotland to compete in the the World Livestock Expo is a pretty humbling experience and we've been there a few times now so that that's very very unique you want to start looking at individual successes of students that have gone through our program we have several students that have decided that teaching ag is something that they desire and so we have ag teachers I think my furthest ag teacher way I have one that just started two years ago now in Texas we have one past student who has decided to go on to become a teacher of teachers down in Texas I have two teachers still teaching in the state of Oregon one in the state of California and so we've had several students go off to just become ag teachers and but I've had some that have gone off to actually impact the ag world per se have some that are working in the feed industry that are trying to make sure that the youth and that the agriculture community has high quality feeds to feed livestock I have one young man that is working with the pork industry and he spends a lot of time outside the United States directing and guiding and giving solutions and helping them problem solve to produce the best pork they possibly can I've got one of our newest youngest students who's just graduated college and are about to graduate college I should say and she's just accepted a job with land of lakes how about the young man who came in this fresh premiere and his family had moved over from climate falls dad was working for a radiator shop here in town I can remember that young man receiving a note seemed like once a week that office would send a note your mom's broke down on high five or on Table Rock Road or someplace and you need to go rescue her and this kid the kids were as a very modest family monetary things didn't mean a whole lot to them they're just a hard-working hard-working family and when the young man graduated you know he went through our entire program he was probably one of my top ag mechanic students and when he graduated he told his dad said son what do you want to do he says well I want to come work for you he said well there's a little problem with that I don't own the company and he said well it's easy dad it's for sale buy it and so dad managed to leverage everything and bought the company and he gave the son a week off after he graduated and before he reported to work and when he showed up he gave the keys to his truck and said son you may work for me now but your job is as outside salesman I never want to see you in this place and I can remember the story is like three or four weeks after he started working for his father this newly owned business his dad finally told him that he needed to go on vacation because they were too busy and second son finally graduated went to work for dad and the company and the company kept growing doing better and better finally the two brothers got together and called dad into the office and told dad that it was time for him to retire and I think that was pretty monumental that dad knew that he was still going to get a monthly paycheck and he didn't have to come to work and that was pretty good for a few years until the brothers called him back in and said dad retirements over you need to manage the company because we're going to leave and we're going to start a new business to provide you and other customers with radiators and they went off and started a business and I can remember from the young man coming into my office and he was just tell me that he couldn't believe how well things were going and after a couple years he came in and brought me a book and said that they just went nationwide across the US and about two years later he came in and said that he had news that they just went worldwide so that's a you know and finally you know dad did retire dad sold the business and now dad works part time for the Suns running parts here doing this and that's a pretty incredible success story you know from the broken down old jalopy cars that they were trying to get a lot get by with to now being able to go buy whatever they they whatever they really need and you know all the children have families and and kids and the grandparents being grandparents and and so that's a that's a pretty big success story and dad if you ever talk to dad he'll tell you that he believes that the the foundation block for this success came from FFA and from one contest called agricultural sales and that ag sale ag sales and service contest built the foundation for his sons to build a business off of and so that's a pretty cool story probably comparable Eagle Point and us are probably about the same size in fact Eagle Point probably sees a few more students than we do just because of the design of their curriculum and how they're giving college credits for science but out of our 300 students that we see a year about pretty close to a hundred of them will be FFA members so always room for improvement we're always looking for more kids to join and trying to get more of them to take that opportunity that's before them and use it and and grow from that but you know we have a extremely successful greenhouse operation and mrs. costman does a great job managing greenhouse and having a mother's day plant sale every year students are doing all the work and the advertising and creating media ads and and work in the sale and animal science we're still extremely competitive not only from the market animal standpoint but also on the livestock evaluation side of things through FFA agricultural mechanics we have a very diverse program when it comes to agriculture mechanics and we've had a lot of success through our career development event in FFA and in fact I think we just got done having our eighth or ninth team competed national FFA convention this year so we're currently on the grow which is quite nice we've had some some visions out there and due to some funding from the state we've been able to allocate some dollars towards building a brand-new livestock pavilion at our land lab which will allow us to do a lot more different things we won't be confined by weather or by daylight and we'll have the ability to fit the needs with multiple different projects and not just one we have an agricultural land lab facility where we have several different we have three barns on it where students can house beef sheep swine turkeys cattle we've even had a couple horses there time or two but it's a it's an area where students who want to raise and maintain livestock have that capability with on a it's kind of like a school farm you know we've produced pumpkins before done tomatoes we're looking at you know raising some field corn here in the future to do a kind of a fun little project with some younger students and we've got plans and some things started to even introduce the newest part of our industry or one of the youngest parts in our Valley which is viticulture so bringing in some of the growing some grapes and and teaching them how to you know trellis and prune and take care of a crop from start to finish that will be that would be a unique challenge and one that's we're starting to see more and more vineyards go up across the valley so I believe it's quite valuable to our students internships are kind of a unique opportunity and I know that we have both a school of biz and the school of caps here within our campus both schools have some internships set up most of them are directed and guided through the main campus versus through FFA we have a lot more of work experience opportunities that take place where the kids are actually have the ability to go out and earn money and work for somebody to gain the knowledge and the skill as well as to be able to gain money for you know maybe they're gonna save it for their college tuition or whatever it happens to be go to national convention absolutely buy that first car you know there's lots of different reasons kids believe they need to have money these days and seems to not ever be enough but it's interesting when you start talking about gender and and what it look like 30 40 years ago to what it looks like today today females seem to be having the stronghold on the gender battle if you would say we have more females participating in FFA we have more females being competitive in our CDEs I when we look at the plant science and the crops and the animals seems that the the females are leading the charge when we start looking at the mechanical side of things I still see the males being predominant but when the females come into the mechanical arena they hold their own and they're very strong back in 1969 when we allowed women to actually join the organization the FFA organization I think that took a good 20 years before women were seen as an equal I think women over the years have become more and more confident and comfortable in the environment of agriculture and that there's a lot more different occupations and careers that are available that would suit or fit the female there's some things that men are always going to be able to do a little better than a female especially when it comes to the brute work males are the ones that are probably going to beat themselves up the hardest and women are going to be the ones that are going to think a little bit smarter about taking care of their bodies and how can I accomplish a task easier without killing half of us I think the females are the ones that are more calculated they tend to make plans and goals and strive to achieve things at a younger age than the males do now is it really technology driven I don't know so much that it's completely technology driven or not or if it's just the change in time is where it's okay for a woman to be doing this job that 50 years ago it was a man's job you drive drive down the road and look out your car window and see what truck you're passing on the freeway and we're seeing a lot more female truck drivers a lot more and they're just as good as any man we see him in the in the fields with operating equipment we see him you know obviously on the design side when you look at the engineering aspects whether it be a mechanical or electrical engineering and of course we see him in all kinds of fields the welding field electrician field the plumbing field so it's an interesting shift that we have seen over the years where I think women are stepping up and women have the support and maybe that's more the key factors that women are supported now more today than they were 50 years ago you know I have two young ladies that have gone on to continue the legacy of a family farm and they're working very hard and diligent in order to do so and one of them is stepping up being a leader within our Valley with the young farmers and ranchers so seeing that initiative and wanting to take the challenges like that on is it's pretty cool to see that happen here's and family community you know the it's okay for a woman to be out in the field working side-by-side with a male today you know I remember growing up there is a family that I was still today I'm still close with this family but when they grew up the place for a female was in the kitchen and yeah they might have had a horse to play with but they weren't out in the field it was not a not a place or an environment for a female to be existing and that wasn't that long ago and I think today our community leaders you know our parents our peers are all very accepting of a woman's very capable of doing any job a man's going to do by the year 2050 we have to double our food production and I think that the future of agriculture within the United States is very bright there's a lot of promise there and there's a lot of need to continue those family farms to continue growing the farms and to look at how we can be more effective with the land that we are currently farming if I look more centrally located to our particular Valley it's encouraging to see that we have pair orchards going back in that we had a long period of time where we took a lot of orchards out and we see orchards are going back in so that's that's promising especially looking at the technology that they're using and the types of trees and they're planning on the orchards I believe that we're utilizing those lands far more effectively today than we once did we also are starting to you know diversify here in the Valley and the viticulture industry is really taking off it's growing we have everything from a large vineyard to a very small vineyard so there's a lot of opportunity for people to take advantage of within that industry you know every end every industry is going to create additional jobs you know we have advertising you have labeling you have processing you have distributors so any type of industry or production or something that we might produce is going to continue to strengthen this Valley and that's production ag or even if we start looking at the mechanical side of things where they're producing you know products to be built here and shipped out someplace else what's the future look like well can't avoid the fact that this Valley is growing and we can't avoid the fact that we only have so many acres within this Valley I think you know our county leaders have a lot of challenges ahead of them to preserve the land that we have and to control urban growth boundaries so that we aren't giving up any more land any easier than we have to however the human race is going to continue to increase which means that we're going to have to maximize our space as efficiently and effectively as we can that's not an easy thing because that might not be what I want to hear later and it's probably not what somebody else wants to hear but you know that's I think the I think the future is bright and I think we have lots of different opportunities for people especially you know we look at the small producers somebody who has a small truck farm and is catering to the farmers markets maybe we have somebody who's a small beef producer who is looking at the grass-fed beef brand or maybe it's the all-natural or maybe we're looking at you know going the no GMO the organics there's this so many different niche markets out there that provide opportunity so I think there's still we have you know lots of years left of agriculture I don't think agriculture is going to leave this valley anytime soon I do think that there's some things that are on the horizon that may change how it looks depending on what some of our government leadership takes action on so you know I think one of my jobs is to continue to develop good leaders for tomorrow and through FFA and giving students the ability to learn and witness and be part of agricultural life will take and give them a firmer foundation as they move off into our leaders for tomorrow