10-05-2025
Not your typical classroom: Students further careers at 100th FAA Convention
GEDDES, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — For thousands of students, the end of the school week was at the New York State Fairgrounds, learning at the 100 annual Future Farmers of America (FAA) convention. From across the country, students gathered and connected over their shared passion for agriculture.
One of the students is 16-year-old Daphne Cronk, who has been raising poultry since she was three years old.
'I am obsessed with them, and I've been collecting poultry. I am hatching geese, I am hatching ducks, I am getting a pond, I have over 30 chickens, so it's something I enjoy doing,' said Cronk.
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Her day is unlike most of her classmates'; she wakes up around 5 a.m. and heads to her coop, where the 16-year-old, 'enough feed, enough water, make sure everything is clean because chickens have a tendency to get their feet infected…they're a little touch.'
In addition to her coop, Cronk is leading other students in her local FFA chapter while planning her future, which includes teaching and writing.
'I also want to do some journalism, and I will use that to do some agriculture advocacy so I can spread the word about how important agriculture education is and other topics I see in the ag industry,' said Cronk.
The topics she wants to cover aren't as soft as her chickens. One is how hard it is for farmers to make a living, stating that 40% of farmers have other jobs.
'If we want to have a sustainable ag system, we need to pay our producers enough to put food on our tables, without producers, we don't eat.'
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