FFA is developing ag advocates
Brooklyn Plumb is serving FFA members in Colorado as state vice president.
By Liz Grady
Even before she put on the blue corduroy FFA jacket, Brooklyn Plumb knew FFA was for her.
From an early age, she joined her father, a high school ag teacher and FFA advisor in Haxtun, Colo., at FFA events like chapter banquets and state FFA conventions. After becoming an FFA member herself, Plumb says, “I absolutely fell in love with it. I don’t think there’s a better place for people to learn about agriculture than FFA.”
Plumb was elected to serve the Colorado FFA Association as state vice president in June 2022, after graduating from Haxtun High School. This year, she’s focusing on her FFA leadership role. When not traveling for FFA events, the Colorado state officer team works at, and lives together on, the Colorado State University Spur campus, which is a set of three buildings in downtown Denver.
“There’s not a lot of agriculture around here. When I look around, all I see are buildings and lots of concrete,” says Plumb. “Because we are in Denver, we see a variety of people. Some may not have been outside of the city or seen a field or a cow in real life. We talk with them and hear their perspectives, and we also get to share our stories with them as agriculturalists.”
Advocacy was something Plumb learned at the State Officer Summit, an annual conference in Washington, D.C., that brings together state officers from the 52 state and U.S. territory FFA associations. The conference is sponsored by the CHS Foundation.
“We learned how we can advocate for ourselves and for agriculture. The most impactful thing for me was meeting FFA members from complete opposite ends of the country and learning about agriculture in their states,” Plumb says.
The conference helped her understand how to be a resource and connector for FFA members who are curious about agriculture practices outside of Colorado, she says.
“Thank you doesn’t even begin to cover the support from the CHS Foundation,” she says. “It means we can continue doing the things we love to do – traveling around the state educating the public about agriculture. That support allows us to do many important things for FFA members and for agriculture as a whole.”
FFA is a signature partner in the CHS Foundation’s efforts to develop ag leaders for life. In addition to sponsoring the State Officer Summit, the CHS Foundation invests more than $1.3 million per year in National FFA, the Colorado FFA Association and 16 other state FFA associations.