A Princeton native is rising through the agricultural ranks to seek a role in the administration of the national FFA organization.
Magen Roberts, a 2006 graduate of Caldwell County High School, is a candidate for national FFA office, the first western Kentucky candidate since the early 1980s.
She is one of 52 candidates seeking a national position. Roberts, Kentucky’s pick, will compete with candidates from the nation’s other 49 states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Six national officers will be elected: a president, a secretary, and four vice-presidents, one each from the organization’s eastern, southern, central and western regions.
Roberts, who will enter her junior year at Murray State University this fall, has been involved with FFA (formerly known as Future Farmers of America) since her freshman year at CCHS, continuing a long-running family tradition.
Her grandfather, Wendell Roberts, and her father, Craig Roberts, served as FFA chapter presidents during their high school careers, and both earned the FFA’s American Degree, the highest degree possible for a member of the organization.
Magen has followed in their footsteps, and beyond. She served as chapter vice-president her junior year and president her senior year, in 2005-06.
In the same year, she was named a regional officer, and became a state officer, sentinel, the year after that.
Her rise through the ranks, and her membership with the FFA organization, was not always an inevitability.
Roberts was born and reared on the Roberts family farm, but when the time came to pursue FFA membership, she was uncertain.
After encouragement from her family, she signed up, taking her first course in agricultural principles as a high school freshman.
“I was hooked, ever since then,” she said.
The appeal came in a few areas, she said.
For one, she added, the organization helped her realize the importance and relevance of agriculture in her own life.
“It also taught me a lot of skills that I could use,” she said. “Once I found out this could teach me more … then I realized it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
She continued her FFA membership after enrolling at Murray State. And while the collegiate-level FFA was less structured than the high school chapter, it remains beneficial she said — particularly in her pursuit of a degree in agriculture education.
Roberts decided to become an ag teacher during her most recent year of college.
Working with the Kentucky FFA Leadership Training Center, she said, has given her a good deal of experience with students, and the agriculture teachers she has encountered there have been “an inspiration,” she said.
Meanwhile, Roberts also continues hands-on work on the farm.
She began her supervised agricultural experience (SAE) project in high school by raising a half-acre of tobacco and working as a farmhand.
She also began her own lawn-mowing business, earning enough money to pay for her own car and insurance.
Following that success, she began raising her own beef cattle herd. “Currently, I’ve got six,” she said.
The experience, she noted, taught her valuable lessons in money management and marketing.
If elected to national office, she will learn more lessons, not only on a national scale but an international one as well.
Much as the state’s FFA officers travel across Kentucky, the national officers will travel across the country and to Japan, to visit with that country’s FFA counterpart, the FFJ.
“It’s a different kind of agriculture,” she said.
National officers will also speak with the U.S. Congress on the importance of agriculture education.
Taking the office, if she is elected, will require Roberts to take a year off of school and spend most of that time on the road.
“She may be in Princeton, Kentucky, maybe 14 days out of the year,” said CCHS agriculture instructor Gerry Baker.
“It was a big decision, to be away from your family for an entire year,” Roberts added.
The election will be held at the FFA national convention in Indianapolis in October.
Candidates will go through a series of interviews. All 52 will be interviewed in the first two days; the top 15 will continue to be interviewed in the next three days.
The nomination committee will be a group of peers selected from the top candidates in each state.
Roberts said the committee that elected her to state office was looking for “a personality that could get involved with the members, personalities that will not clash.”
She believes the national committee will have similar criteria.
If she is elected, the national organization will cover travel, housing, food and official clothing expenses. “We won’t have time for an actual job,” she said.
Her high school instructors, Baker and Wes York, say Roberts is a success, regardless of the election’s outcome.
“We’re very proud of the whole opportunity she’s created for west Kentucky and our chapter,” said York.
“Mr. Baker and I have just seen so many students just grow from their freshman year,” he said.
If unsuccessful in her bid for national office, Roberts will return to MSU and continue to pursue her goal of being an agriculture educator.
“An ag teacher’s the best job in the school system,” said Baker. “Eighty percent of your students want to be in the class.”
The organization is also very family-oriented, Roberts added. When an instructor accompanies the chapter to FFA events, their families often travel along.
Her previous successes in the organization should put that educational goal well within reach.
“It will give me, I think, the greatest joy,” she said.
