A Brief But Spectacular take on leadership and community through farming

Amna Nawaz:

In this season of gathering around the table, we hear from self-proclaimed proud ag youth Anixia Davila from Salinas Valley, California, known as the Salad Bowl of the World.

Geoff Bennett:

Davila has led her high school chapter of Future Farmers of America, which has more than a million students participating nationwide.

Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on what she's learned about leadership, responsibility, and community through farming.

Anixia Davila, Future Farmers of America: The poem I'm reciting is lineage by Margaret Walker.

"My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. My grandmothers are full of memories, smelling of soap and onions and wet clay with veins rolling roughly over quick hands. They have many clean words to say. My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?"

My grandmothers were both from Mexico and they migrated here to America and they're very much my role models. My father and my brother both work in the agriculture industry in the Salinas Valley. The Salinas Valley is sometimes referred to as the Salad Bowl of the world.

Gonzales is a small little community town. It's surrounded by fields. We're also kind of split by the freeway, so sometimes they're also called like a little gas station stop. Entering my freshman year, I chose to take ag biology instead of regular biology because I was introduced to the FFA program, which is Future Farmers of America.

Once your food reaches a table, I mean, it's gone through so many processes in order for you to be able to safely consume it. There's so many different jobs in the agriculture industry that you don't necessarily think of off the bat. Like, there's plant science. There's animal science. There's the dairy farmers.

I raise livestock for FFA, and I'm currently raising a market goat called Grover. And he is such a silly little goat. We have a farm at our school. And so I go and I feed him in the morning and then in the afternoons. Probably, after this, I will go and feed him again.

Being an ag youth is definitely empowering. Agriculture in general is just so diverse. It's definitely a battle that we face to educate people that the agriculture industry isn't just a farmer in a field.

My name is Anixia Davila, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on representing ag youth.

Geoff Bennett:

Well she is delightful.

And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.