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USA FFA Chapter gaining community support for new ag facility

An FFA chapter in Michigan’s Thumb is one step closer to building an agricultural barn to support educational and community service efforts.

Unionville-Sebewaing Area High School agriculture teacher and FFA advisor Shannon Bowman tells Brownfield a new facility will provide more hands-on learning opportunities for middle and high school students.

“It’s going to have a small animal component to it, so it’ll be heated, it’ll be climate controlled, she explains. “We can have poultry getting started in there. We can have rabbits year-round. We can have pheasants so we can use it for natural resources and release in the area. And we’ll also have a large animal component.”

Co-advisor Deana Arnold says the program plans to more than double the number of market chickens it raises for the Michigan FFA Broiler Contest.

“It’s just astonishing how many kids think their food just comes from the grocery store,” she shares. “To take them through the process is eye-opening for them. They actually get to see what happens to chicken before it gets packaged and goes through the processing stage.”

Students will raise 250 chickens this fall which are then shared with families in need across the community as part of an annual Thanksgiving Blessing Box.

The program recently received $10,000 through the ACH Seeds Crystal Brand Sugarbeet Seed Homegrown Giving Awards. 

Great Lakes sales manager Andy Bernia tells Brownfield the school is just four miles south of Michigan Sugar Company’s Sebewaing processing plant and a critical pipeline for the agricultural workforce.

“It’s great to see FFA getting rejuvenated, reinvigorated here at USA,” he says. “We’ve had such a strong history in the past, such a strong heritage for agriculture, for FFA, and I think that’s one of the things that our selection committee really recognized.”

The project was also awarded a Michigan FFA Association infrastructure grant this past year and is still fundraising to finish the facility’s build-out.

Bowman says about a third of the students in the public school participate in agriscience and natural resources classes each year.

ACH Seeds annually selects six Homegrown Giving winners across major sugarbeet-producing regions of the U.S.