Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to a practice presentation by an FFA team as part of their preparation for contest. There were 7 members of the team, 2 of which had come down with an illness and were unable to attend. All 7 members of the team were young ladies.
The topic they presented was on reducing meat consumption to help prevent climate change. Two members took the "pro" position, two the "con" position and one acted as moderator. The "debate" was highly scripted. After their presentation, it was our job as part of the practice opportunity, to ask questions. Our group consisted entirely of beef producers who were obviously biased against reduction of beef consumption.
I felt sorry for these young ladies in a way because in our group was a PhD Animal Scientist, a PhD Microbiologist, 2 Veterinarians, a retired County Extension Agent, a Current County Extension Agent an Ag Banker, the owner of a Livestock Auction and me (I'm not sure what my qualifications were.) The level of questions, which we had been instructed were to be extremely challenging, were mostly way over the heads of these youth.
It was an enlightening exercise. The issue is complex and requires a fairly deep knowledge of physical science, chemistry, biology, environmental science, climatology, economics and who knows what other disciplines in order to fully understand the impact -- pro or con -- of changing our beef consumption, and possibly more importantly, production habits.
I applaud these youth for taking on such a difficult topic. I wish them well in their future endeavors. All of them desire to one day be in production agriculture. They understand that feeding the growing population of the world in an environment of difficult challenges will be a critical and valuable career and they are preparing now for those challenges ahead.
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