New state FFA adviser to increase agricultural education

PALMER — After 32 years of teaching high school students all they need to know and more about agriculture in Montana, Kevin Fochs has seen too many successes to ignore.

Fochs, the new Alaska FFA Adviser, grew up on a ranch in Shawmut, Montana, involved in 4-H and FFA, formerly known as the Future Farmers of America.

Why “formerly”?

“I think a lot of people have the opinion that…when you say ‘agriculture,’ you’re just talking about farmers and ranchers,” Fochs said, “(but) that’s not a true picture of what agriculture is.”

In fact, “it really falls under career and technical education,” he said.

As a high school teacher in Montana, Fochs taught animal science, plant science, veterinary science, horticulture, mechanics — including courses involving welding, carpentry and electricity — and leadership — including courses on sales, public speaking, marketing and parliamentary procedure.

At that school, Fochs’ classes followed a national “three-circle model” of agricultural education. The first circle represents classroom and laboratory instruction, the second supervised agricultural experience programs, or SAE, and the third student leadership organizations, such as FFA.

When Fochs moved to Alaska in December — his first time in Southcentral — he was surprised to see so little emphasis on agriculture in schools around the state.

“I see young kids begging for education in that area,” he said. “There’s a large homeschool population that’s doing specific training in agriculture right now and are involved in FFA.”

Fochs mentioned the idea for Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy, a potential charter school which was championed by some 60 parents, students and teachers present at a recent Mat-Su Borough School Board meeting. According to the partnership presenting the academy, hands-on agricultural and environmental education would be central to the school. Though Fochs said he had not heard anything about the potential school aside from what was said at the meeting, he noted the significant community support there as indication of the both the interest and apparent lack of agricultural education opportunities in the Valley.

Fochs said he hopes to create some of those opportunities, for several reasons.

In the Montana high school classes he taught, Fochs had a variety of students, from valedictorians to once near-dropouts. At each end of the spectrum, agricultural education brought students an appreciation of, essentially, their backyard, and taught them how to use what grew around them naturally to live more sustainably, he said.

However, for a particular demographic, “ag ed” had added benefits.

“It was also an avenue for kids who struggled maybe in the (core) academic areas to keep them in school,” Fochs said.

That’s why he believes incorporating the three-circle model into Alaska schools will bring so much to Alaska.

And that means all three circles, not just one.

“Some schools are just doing the FFA component, and they’re treating it like an after school club, which it really isn’t. It should be part of the curriculum,” he said.

Part of the reason for this is to show students what really goes into a successful agriculture operation.

Fochs used the booming Alaska peony industry as an example.

“People are wanting to learn about it and wanting to learn how to do it because there’s some money in the industry, but they’re struggling,” he said.

Fochs said it’s probably because people think growing peonies is simply a matter of buying seeds, planting and harvesting. In reality, a peony farmer needs to know what soil they can plant in, what varieties they can plant, how to check for disease or what to do if a crop becomes diseased, where they can buy or rent farming equipment and fertilizer and who can package and market their product.

There are jobs in the industry, Fochs said — research scientists, equipment providers, marketing agencies — but Alaska needs people to take those jobs, and to be prepared to do so.

“I’m not saying that a student could’ve graduated out of my high school program and been a research scientist, but they would have enough background…(for) a career path that…would help that industry meet the needs in their shortages,” Fochs said.

But peony farming is not the only, nor the most sustainable, aspect of Alaska’s current and potential agricultural industry. Increasing fruit, vegetable and livestock production would bring enormous benefits to Alaska’s economy, he said.

“It’s like a three-legged stool” between government, oil and other resources, he said — if one leg goes down, the whole thing collapses, along with whoever’s sitting on top.

(To read more about this concept, visit alaskaseconomy.org.)

“(Alaska’s) dependency on (the) oil and gas industry is huge,” Fochs said. “Whatever we can do to broaden our economy so it’s not so dependent on one industry I think is good for the state of Alaska.”

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.