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<\/p>\nWESSINGTON SPRINGS, S.D. \u2014 As South Dakota FFA prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2028, a team of storytellers is racing to preserve a century of stories before they’re lost.<\/p>\n
What began with a conversation outside Wessington Springs High School has become a statewide documentary project tracing the history and impact of South Dakota FFA. The 30-minute film, currently in production, will premiere at the 2028 State FFA Convention at South Dakota State University before airing on South Dakota Public Broadcasting.<\/p>\n
For writer and co-producer Lura Roti, the film is about much more than looking back.<\/p>\n
“This documentary is about the impact of FFA in South Dakota as much as the history,” Roti said. “It’s not just history but its impact.”<\/p>\n
That impact stretches far beyond production agriculture.<\/p>\n
The documentary will explore how FFA has evolved over the past century, growing from an organization originally intended for farm boys into one that welcomes students with interests ranging from communications and science to mechanics, business and healthcare. Today, South Dakota FFA has more than 100 chapters and roughly 6,000 members.<\/p>\n
The project traces its roots to a conversation between Roti and Wessington Springs agriculture instructor Brady Duxbury after she visited the community to write about the local FFA floriculture team. Duxbury suggested producing a documentary to mark the organization’s centennial. Roti, who has completed freelance work for SDPB, pitched the idea to the station during her drive home. Budget cuts initially stalled the project before the South Dakota Farmers Union stepped forward as its exclusive sponsor.<\/p>\n
The filmmakers didn’t wait long.<\/p>\n
Recognizing the organization’s earliest members were aging, Roti and filmmaker Zeke Hanson began recording interviews even before funding had been finalized.<\/p>\n
“We needed to get started immediately because older FFA alumni were not getting any younger,” Roti explained. Their first interview, with longtime FFA alumnus Jim Woster, came months before production officially began.<\/p>\n
Since then, the crew has traveled across South Dakota gathering more than 13 hours of interviews and between up to 40 hours of video footage.<\/p>\n
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Wessington Springs FFA advisor Brady Duxbury stands with the chapter\u2019s officer team during an FFA meeting filmed for a South Dakota FFA centennial documentary project. The film crew visited Wessington Springs to capture the chapter\u2019s activities and history as part of the 30-minute documentary scheduled to premiere at the 2028 State FFA Convention.<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of Lura Roti <\/p>\n
Their work has taken them from welding shops and floral design classrooms to livestock judging contests and chapter meetings. In Wessington Springs, students were filmed reciting the FFA Creed, participating in hands-on agricultural education and carrying out everyday chapter activities.<\/p>\n
Duxbury helped connect the crew with volunteers at the Jerauld County Pioneer Museum, where historic photographs, newspaper clippings, and record books documenting the chapter’s past were digitized for the project.<\/p>\n
That history runs especially deep in Wessington Springs, where the school’s agricultural education program dates to the 1915-16 school year, making it one of the first four in South Dakota and predating the federal Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which established vocational agricultural education nationwide.<\/p>\n
The documentary also explores how FFA has evolved from an organization focused largely on production agriculture into one serving students pursuing careers ranging from communications and science to healthcare and business.<\/p>\n
“It used to be focused on kids who actually lived and worked in production ag,” Roti said. “Now any teen can be involved in FFA because anyone, any professional, can be involved in an agriculture career. So as agriculture in the world has evolved, so has FFA.”<\/p>\n
For Duxbury, that evolution is one of the organization’s greatest strengths.<\/p>\n
He estimates many of his former students have gone on to careers as doctors, lawyers and nurses rather than farmers.<\/p>\n
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South Dakota FFA State President Tyler Strasser and Secretary Kate Meyer visit with documentary filmmakers Lura Roti and Zeke Hanson at the Corn Palace in Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of Lura Roti <\/p>\n
Duxbury said the organization equips students with leadership, public speaking, marketing and teamwork skills that benefit careers well beyond agriculture.<\/p>\n
“We’re so diversified and yet we always come back to the same core principles \u2014 leadership, personal growth and success,” Duxbury said. “We have a core, and even as we expand around the core, we don’t change the core.”<\/p>\n
Roti knows those lessons firsthand.<\/p>\n
A former Newell FFA member and 1998-99 state FFA reporter, she credits an FFA Creed speaking contest with inspiring her career in agricultural journalism.<\/p>\n
She also remembers what wearing the organization’s iconic blue corduroy jacket meant growing up in a large family with limited financial resources.<\/p>\n
“I loved putting on my blue corduroy jacket because all of a sudden I was an equal,” Roti said. “Growing up, I came from a big family. We never had that much money. I had to buy my own clothes. I didn’t have the nice name-brand clothes. That didn’t matter because when I went to an FFA competition, I put on my official dress and I looked like everybody else.”<\/p>\n
Hanson brings an outsider’s perspective to the production. Unlike Roti, Hanson never belonged to FFA, something the team considers an advantage.<\/p>\n
His goal is ensuring the documentary resonates with audiences regardless of whether they’ve ever worn a blue jacket.<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to do the best we can to tell a story that whether you are deeply in a family tradition of FFA or whether it’s new to you, it makes sense to everybody,” Hanson said.<\/p>\n
Condensing 100 years into 30 minutes has proven one of the project’s biggest challenges.<\/p>\n
“We have over 13 hours of interviews,” Hanson said. “It wouldn’t be hard to make a series out of this.”<\/p>\n
Much of what won’t appear in the documentary won’t be lost. Interviews, video and historical materials gathered during production will eventually be archived through SDSU’s Briggs Library and the Agricultural Heritage Museum. SDPB also plans to release extended interviews online and a photo-heavy companion history book is in the works.<\/p>\n
Roti is still asking South Dakotans to help.<\/p>\n
She hopes former FFA members and families will share vintage photographs and memorabilia that can further document the organization’s history before the film is completed.<\/p>\n
As production continues, Roti hopes viewers will come away with a deeper understanding of an organization that has shaped generations of South Dakotans.<\/p>\n
“It gives students a way to excel that isn’t connected to athletics,” Roti said. “If you’re a high schooler who’s passionate about science or mechanics, or in my case communications, FFA is a place where you can go and be your best.”<\/p>\n
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