Help Grow Your Soup

On a Sunny August day, in the heart of the Midwest, 45 FFA members gathered with Alumni and friends to begin a project... and truly had a "hay day".

Chelsea Riordan, a high school student and FFA member from Illinois is the sixth generation of her family and the fifth to be currently involved in FFA. She and her brother are FFA members and her family is all members of the National FFA Alumni. Well, as she works hard in her Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE), she uses many structures and pieces of equipment, and one of her family's barns was about to get a face lift.

Campbell Soup Company has partnered with the National FFA Organization to donate a quarter of million dollars to fund agricultural education programs. Along with assisting National FFA Alumni in providing an opportunity for alumni members to engage and mentor FFA members through these service projects, this project also allows the alumni to provide scholarships for the Washington Leadership Conference (WLC) to all chapters that participate in the barn preservation. Partners in Active Learning Support (PALS), a peer-to-peer mentoring program and 10x15, Agricultural Education's long range strategic goal for increasing growth and quality by attaining 10,000 ag programs/FFA chapters by 2015 are two other areas of focus for the Campbell/FFA partnership.

So... How does a barn preservation fit?

Campbell’s and the FFA Alumni want to help keep good things growing in agriculture – our national’s largest industry employing 17% of the workforce. Because barns are an iconic symbol of American agriculture, this effort is designed to raise awareness for the importance of supporting the people and places that help grow our food. Chelsea isn't only involved in agriculture currently; she plans to become an agricultural education major and teach ag to other students and future FFA members.

On Monday, August 11, volunteers from Campbell Soup Company Corporate Headquarters, the Riordan family, four FFA Chapters and their advisors, local and national FFA Alumni, TV crews and newspaper reporters and more joined together to begin the painting. Within hours, not only was the barn completely painted, so were many of us! And, after a second day on the job, Chelsea and her family took pride in their restored piece of history and currently active red barn.

Now, the barn stands out against the beautiful agricultural countryside and embodies a passion of both future and present agriculturalists.

You can learn more about this initiative. Beginning September 29, 2008, visit http://www.helpgrowyoursoup.com/ and click on the symbolic red barn. It will trigger a $1 donation to the FFA, and you will help preserve the future of this organization and the industry of agriculture.