Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

On Wednesday, Troup County’s Future Farmers of America (FFA) celebrated its second annual Agriculture Day at the Troup County Agriculture Center. 

The event brought the FFA clubs from all the high schools in the Troup County School System for a morning filled with speakers from the House of Representatives, information on colleges, leadership and team building and opportunities to get up close and personal with a few animals. 

Jessica Bowden, the AG teacher from LaGrange High, said Agriculture Day or AG Day was organized by each of the agriculture teachers at the high schools. The event also included student input from all the high schools.

Troup High’s Austin Tucker said he enjoyed sitting back and working with the other three teachers to put this on for the kids.

“I’ve heard they enjoyed it last year and hopefully they enjoyed this year,” Tucker said. “I hope it’s something that we can continue to do for them.”

Callaway High’s Ashton Wheeless said it was amazing to see all of the kids come together.

“As a teacher at Callaway, I often get to see the other students at competitions but being able to make connections with them here has been amazing,” Wheeless said. “It’s very rewarding to see how much they value this and to have the opportunity to connect with one another.”

This year Diverse Power provided the event with an education grant that helped provide the students with resources for the day.

“The grant is available every year for educational purposes. You give a description of the event, and we were blessed to have that opportunity to share, so we provided lunch, T-shirts, guest speakers — anything that would have cost money for us to put this day on was sponsored by Diverse Power,” Bowden said. “We’re very fortunate to have a business community leader that invests in our students and the county.”

Savannah Farrell from LHS said the idea of bringing all the FFA clubs together was to work toward a common goal.

“There’s a lot of rivalry between the three schools because we compete against each other,” Farrell said. “All of us show agriculture in Troup County when we go out and compete. It’s not always just us competing against each other, this allows us to be like friends with people who are just going to advocate for agriculture in Troup County as a whole.”