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In Kansas City's sprawling Municipal Auditorium one night last week, 10,000 blue-jacketed youths sat tense and quiet as an announcement was made from the stage. Then, as they came to their feet in a blaze of applause, a 119-piece band blared a fanfare, and a dozen spotlights lanced through the darkened arena to center on a wiry, suddenly pale young man who stood awkwardly rubbing the sweat from his palms. Joe Moore, who runs a farm near Liberty, about halfway between the communities of Accident and Nameless in Tennessee's Cumberland foothills, had just been named 1955's Star Farmer of America.
The Star Farmer award is the highest that can come to one of the 383,000 members of the Future Farmers of America, a voluntary organization that includes more than 95% of all U.S. high-school boys taking vocational agriculture courses. Since it was founded in 1928, the F.F.A., along with the 4-H Clubs, has trained the farm youth in the science of his profession, taught him to use and live with his machines, given him a strength of pride in his calling and a broadened outlook at the world about him. Yesterday's F.F.A. leaders have helped bring U.S. agriculture to the most bountiful state ever known to any civilization, and in so serving their nation they have served themselves. Examples: 1938's Star Farmer, Hunter Roy Greenlaw, found himself at 16, when his father died, running his family farm near Fredericksburg, Va.; he has built up his property from 385 acres and a few dairy cattle to nearly 800 acres and a herd of 200 Herefords. James Henry Thompson of Salem, Ore., Star Farmer in 1942, originally paid $15,000 for the property he now values at $55,000, lives in a modern ranch-style house. Ray Gene Cinnamon, of Garber, Okla., Star Farmer in 1947, began as a sheepherder, now operates an 800-acre farm and owns a producing oil well. Today's F.F.A. leaders, building on the experience of their predecessors, have even greater opportunities.
The F.F.A. judges, in selecting north central Tennessee's Joe Moore last week, went mostly by statistics. Even in this limited context, the record was imposing: Joe farms 505 acres, of which he owns 85; he rents the rest from his father, a fertilizer salesman, for $1,150 (plus three butchered hogs and a calf) a year. He has bought nearly $15,000 worth of equipment, ranging from a $2,800 John Deere tractor to a $125 mule-drawn wagon. His livestock is valued at more than $16,000 and includes 71 head of beef cattle, 30 of them fine purebred Aberdeen-Angus, plus seven registered Duroc-Jersey sows and about 80 sheep. He has won more than 170 prizes at local, county, state and national fairs and expositions. In all, Joe has complete managerial responsibility for a $49,000 farm business. His net worth is $37,000. Another statistic: he has just turned 21.