When you hear about Hatch, New Mexico, the first thing that comes to mind is its world-famous green chiles. And it’s no wonder — Hatch has always been a rural, agricultural community, raising dairy cattle, alfalfa, onions, pecans, and red and green chiles.
So, it’s no surprise that FFA and career and technical education are center stage at Hatch Valley Public Schools, a program that’s celebrating 95 years of agricultural education this year. But it wasn’t always that way.
When Superintendent Michael Chavez came on board in 2019, the school district had only eight FFA members. He reached out to community members, and one of their top requests was to improve the ag program.
“They wanted it to be brought back to its glory days,” explains Chavez. However, while Chavez was passionate about meeting the community’s needs, he admitted he didn’t know anything about agriculture. Enter Kim O’Byrne, the school’s ag instructional coach,
While the Village of Hatch has a poverty rate of 27.8 percent, surrounding communities such as Garfield, Salem, Rincon, Milagros, and Placitas bring the area’s poverty rate to 53.39 percent. And despite being located along the fertile Rio Grande Valley, one of its main employment sectors, agriculture, has been struggling with water issues and litigation surrounding disputes on the allocation and distribution of the Rio Grand’s waters in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.
It made sense that the school would look into hydroponics educational options, tying a community interest into a teaching opportunity.
Hatch Valley Public Schools received a Kellogg Foundation grant that funded tower gardens in every elementary school classroom. The middle school’s greenhouse was put to work. Then, Chavez and O’Byrne purchased a vertical, hydroponic farm built inside a modular container, called a freight farm, for the high school FFA program.
Then, the school initiated the Building Educational Experiences through Agricultural Resources program along with the funding and hydroponics materials.
The problem? With only eight FFA members, the program needed a jump start. The school decided that it didn’t want any barriers to students’ participation in agricultural education. The best place to start was with membership dues. Now, every student who is enrolled in an agricultural course has their affiliation dues paid and is enrolled in FFA — and there are currently 225 FFA members.
“Most of our students already have founts of knowledge that they bring to the classroom; they have some familiarity with agriculture,” explains O’Byrne. “But, we wanted them to be able to participate in hands-on learning opportunities from pre-K through 12th grade.”
Four agricultural educators — O’Byrne, Rian Nails, Efren Duran, and Josh Bustamante — teach various courses. The school offers students opportunities in ag mechanics, welding, auto technology, ag structures, forestry and wildlife management, metal fabrication, and more.
Hatch FFA brings the learning full circle through its freight farm and animal science center
O’Byrne’s vision for agricultural education includes hands-on experiential learning but also making the FFA programs self-sustaining.
“We decided part of our goal was to make sure that our students were learning about public relations, public speaking, financial literacy, and of course, the science behind growing plants,” she said.
The freight farm currently offers produce grown on 3 to 5 acres with hydroponics technology, using 97 percent less water.
High schoolers will receive their safe-food-handlers license as part of the freight farm’s business plan, raising fruits and vegetables to sell through local business partners, including grocery stores, cafeterias, restaurants, and the local food bank.
FFA members have even had the opportunity to share agronomy efficiency with local farmers.
Along with the interest Hatch Valley has in farming and plant sciences, another priority for O’Byrne and Hatch’s schools was animal science. Care for pets and livestock in New Mexico has become a critical issue, with veterinary shortages making livestock veterinarians harder and harder to come by and staffing shortages at vet clinics leaving limited options for pet owners.
In 2023, the state had only one 24/7 emergency vet clinic.
“There is a huge veterinary shortage, and we’re hoping to answer that shortage in our community and the surrounding areas with the animal science center,” O’Byrne said.
Students and staff have already garnered huge support for the project. Support from Hatch’s Mayor James Whitlock and U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan have helped get the ball rolling.
While the school’s animal science center will likely be completed by 2025, the school and its students already have big plans. Hatch schools has already broken ground on the new facility, which will house a learning lab for students, a vet clinic that will host part-time veterinarians and recently graduated veterinary students, as well as a student-run pet grooming facility.
“It’s a high level of rigor in a vet clinic, because it’s a medical pathway. We need to bring up our math and reading scores (like everyone in this state), but I feel like the only way we can do that is to do it differently,” O’Byrne said. “We want to show them that this is why you need math. And when you show them things like that, students rise to the occasion.”
And rise to the occasion they have. When Hatch Valley FFA members visited the legislature, they immediately sought out state Sen. Jeff Steinborn to request further funding.
“If I would have asked, the answer would have been, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t this time,’ but you can’t tell kids that. They did such a good job advocating for their program, they received further funding” O’Byrne said.
The upcoming vet clinic garners national interest
Still in the planning, building, and collaborative stages, the upcoming animals science center has already secured support and interest from veterinarians and universities.
New Mexico State University students completed a marketing plan and created a logo for the animal science center. The plan and logo will be presented this Wednesday to the Hatch Valley Public School Board.
“This is what education should look like,” said O’Byrne. “It’s about collaborating and problem-solving.”
The animal science center has also garnered interest from surrounding schools around the state, hoping to make a trip to come see the building. NMSU’s engineering department has taken an interest in the building and seeing how they can build something similar from scratch.
FFA members and students are also at the center of discussions and planning, and O’Byrne said, “You won’t see them on their phones unless it’s to calculate something. We needed a new model of education that we’ve had for decades; they need something faster, more challenging, and more engaging.”
Hatch Valley believes that programs like the freight farm and animal science center are already meeting that need while students plan and begin running school-operated businesses.
“We’ve done such a horrible job of narrowing curriculums to focus on proficiency and test scores,” said Chavez. “But test scores don’t define a kid. They don’t determine their destiny. Life is about learning and doing.”
The hope is that Hatch Valley Public Schools will be offering experiences that students can take beyond the classroom.
“We’re in it for the long game, and we’ve been blessed along the way,” Chavez said. “All of these doors and opportunities keep opening, and it’s been incredible.”
Heidi Crnkovic, is the Associate Editor for AGDAILY. She is a New Mexico native with deep-seated roots in the Southwest and a passion for all things agriculture.
