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National FFA announces Blue Room

FFA members attending the National FFA Convention this year will be able to experience the Blue Room, a 17,000-square-foot interactive exhibit that will showcase agriculture and innovation.

National FFA CEO Mark Poeschl says the Blue Room will help modernize FFA programming to reflect today’s technology and research.

“You think about robotics, drone technologies, sustainability, how we treat water and soil, and now artificial intelligence,” he says. “All of those have an impact on agriculture, but we weren’t integrating those things into our FFA programming.”

Audio: Mark Poeschl, National FFA CEO 

Loren King, A former member of Branch Area Career Center FFA in Michigan, says the Blue Room will give FFA members a place to bring their ideas to life.

“Being able to actually see the CEO of a company demonstrate their product, being able to get a live feed or view of how GMO seeds work, or anything along those lines- it really makes it stick in somebody’s head,” he says.

Audio: Loren King, former member of Branch Career Center FFA 

The curriculum in the exhibit will eventually be available online and known as Blue 365, which Poeschl says should be available during National FFA week in February.

AgriNovus Indiana partnered with National FFA to bring the Blue Room to life.

Audio: Beth Bechdol, AgriNovus Indiana 

Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture division of DowDuPont, and Elanco are also sponsors of The Blue Room.

Audio: Susanne Wasson, Coretva Agriscience