ROYAL CENTER — Pioneer Elementary School's Mini FFA has blossomed to 170 students in just its second year.
The agriculture club for kindergarten through sixth-graders started in January 2017. About 100 Pioneer kids signed up that year, and 70 more joined this past fall, mini FFA sponsor and school counselor Deb Carlson said. That's about a third of the school's enrollment.
Even though Pioneer is situated in rural Cass County, Carlson said many youngsters who didn't grow up on a farm don't know much about agriculture. The club is split into a kindergarten through second grade group and third through fifth-graders, each meeting every other month.
According to Indiana's FFA adviser, Pioneer has the only mini FFA in the state, Carlson said.
Members of Pioneer Jr.-Sr. High School's FFA club, also in its second school year, teach the elementary kids about animals, soil and plants, how farming equipment meets and various other subjects. Senior DeAnna Johnson said the elementary students are lucky to be in mini FFA.
“A bunch of our first experiences in FFA … we’re already bringing to them so they get kind of a head start, which is awesome," DeAnna said. “This is just setting up our future to have Pioneer FFA to potentially be a great agriculture program.”
DeAnna didn't grow up on a farm, but she said joining FFA two years ago has helped shaped her future. She plans to study agriculture communications at Purdue University this coming fall.
As the older FFA students prepare for contests for each season, DeAnna said they share that with the elementary kids. They club of about 30 members talked about reindeer around Christmastime and related the Thanksgiving meal to agriculture, DeAnna said. Earlier in the year, the two clubs had a "Barnyard Olympics" and a petting zoo.
On Tuesday, April 17, the FFA students showed the third through fifth grade mini FFA'ers how to make a terrarium out of a plastic 2-liter bottle. They poured water into the bottle, carefully put fishes inside and then placed a plant on top with a string attached to create a mini ecosystem.
Wyatt Felker, a junior and newly elected president of the Pioneer FFA, said he's glad the elementary students can learn about agriculture at such at young age.
“They’re energetic. They keep you on your feet," Wyatt added.
Sixth-grader Kendric Personett, president of Pioneer's mini FFA, lives on the farm and so joining the club was second nature to him. He helps lead the meetings each month with the other sixth-grade officers. At one meeting, he taught that brown cows don't produce chocolate milk.
“I like helping the kids learn about farming because that’s how they get their food — the cows and the animals and harvesting," Kendric said.