My name is Grace Stanley. I am the 4th generation on our dairy farm. I think that Patrick Henry High School should have an animal agriculture class. I am a member of the Liberty Middle School FFA and I am about to enter high school in the next few months.

 I want to be an FFA member at Patrick Henry, and to do that I must take an agriculture class. FFA is important to me because I serve as an officer. It gives me leadership opportunities and it is a chance for younger people interested in promoting agriculture to work together. I am not interested in agriculture mechanics and that leaves plants. There are only two classes to take about plants and by 10th grade I will be out of classes to take. 

There are many in my FFA chapter that have some sort of farm animals or are interested in working with animals in the future. I think that it would be nice to have more options in the agriculture area. The limited number of agriculture courses offered to Hanover County students is out of balance to the importance of agriculture in Virginia. Agriculture is Virginia's biggest private industry by far. According to the Virginia Department of Agriculture, “the industry has an economic impact of $70 billion annually and provides more than 334,000 jobs in the Commonwealth.”