Chapter visits will help ‘Spark’ interest in FFA

Following the busy 10 days at the Illinois State Fair, with over 60,000 people passing through the barnyard, the Illinois FFA major state officers were still in full fair swing and headed to the Du Quoin State Fair. At the fair, the majors cut the ribbon and walked in the parade along with the local section officer teams.

Early the next morning, Koben, Ethan and Kyle traveled to Rantoul for the Half Century of Progress show, where they helped with registration for the kiddie tractor pull, participated in the daily parade and then assisted with the auction of toolboxes in which all proceeds were donated to FFA.

After a quick break, all six major state officers returned to Springfield for in-depth training on workshop delivery with the help of the National FFA staff. Following these two days were another two days of speech delivery brought to them by Andrew McCrea. These days of training were preparing the majors for five weeks of chapter visits.

During these weeks, each section will be visited by one or two majors, along with the section president and the section officers. During the five weeks, they will visit almost every school in each of the 25 sections across the state, giving a roughly 40-minute workshop to over 380 FFA chapters. This year’s state theme is “Spark” and the chapter visits bring this theme to life by “Sparking Interest.”

With another week down, it was time to head to the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, where the majors spent the week with different agricultural companies that support the Illinois Association FFA and Illinois Foundation FFA. During the week, they also had a FFA member huddle each day in the Farm Credit tent. This allowed members who were attending the show to come meet and get to know the majors just a little bit better.

After enjoying the Labor Day weekend, the majors were back at it with chapter visit rehearsals on Wednesday to help get them better prepared for going on the road with the workshop. The rest of the week, the majors spent packing up the chapter visits STAR Conference supplies, for Section Team Activities and Responsibilities.

After arriving back from the quick weekend, the majors were about to split up and conquer once again. This time, Koben, Ethan and Paige headed to STAR Conferences for Districts 1, 2 and 4. Natalie, Kyle and Kaydence headed for STAR Conferences for Districts 3 and 5, as well as Southern Illinois University Greenhand Conference, Western Illinois University Greenhand Conference and the SIUC COLT Conference, for Chapter Officer Leadership Training. While this week was definitely full, the majors were about to hit the road for chapter visits starting on Sept. 15.

Ethan Bremmer from the Pearl City FFA Chapter is the 2025-2026 Illinois Association FFA state reporter.