Future Farmers of America - 1940

Future Farmers of America - 1940

            “In 1935 the Kentucky State Fair established a separate competitive department for the State’s Future Farmers of America.  This organization, known as the “F.F.A.,” is composed of pupils studying agriculture in Kentucky high schools that offer courses in compliance with the Smith-Hughes Act. There were 237 of these schools in Kentucky in 1939, and in each school there was a chapter of the Future Farmers of America, a national organization of prospective farmers, the object of which is to improve the farm and farm home conditions. The Kentucky F.F.A. has a membership of about 8,000 boys studying vocational agriculture (1935).

            Ten thousand Kentucky members of the F.F.A. sent their ablest representatives to the 1940 Kentucky State Fair.  Mention is made but of a few of the varied activities of the 624 contestants coming from 208 chapters in teams of three or showing individually. Among their extra-curricular doings of fair week was an evening parade that drew the attention of many thousands on the grounds. The F.F.A. winners in the livestock classes received as awards a trip to the American Royal Livestock Show at Kansas City, all expenses paid, plus $800 in cash.  Among the individual championship winners were: W. F. Crosby, Lewisburg, Mason County, in the Chester-White pig division, and Thurston Everly of Centertown, Ohio County, in the Duroc-Jersey pig division. Cecil Epperson, Winchester; Howard Glenn Lea, Brooksville; Charles Wallingford, Nepton; and Arnold Hayden, Lexington, took swine show honors. F.F.A. prize winners in the poultry classes were the Bagdad Chapter; the Pleasureville Chapter; the Winchester and Clay County winning team consisted of Otis Bundy, Paul Reynolds and Baxter Smith; Howard Glenn Lea of Brooksville; Reuben Naylor of Lexington; Robert F. Simpson of Nicholsville and Donald Ward of Hartford. Austin Spencer, of Marion, won first prize on Irish Cobbler potatoes.”

Copied from “Fairs and Fair Makers of Kentucky, Volume II, Kentucky State Fair” – prepared by the WPA and published by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, April 1932.