Through its FFA Heartland Grant Program, the Smithfield Foods-owned Farmland brand honored the achievements of 20 FFA members at the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis and provided $1,000 grants to each of them to fund agricultural and community projects. Eligible students were selected from chapters in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri.
The presentation helped bring Farmland’s second-annual Honoring the Heartland Tour to a close. The food truck tour had been on the road for 12 weeks to show appreciation for Midwest farming communities by delivering “grab-n-go” meals, providing monetary donations to invest in the next generation of farmers, and supporting neighborhoods rooted in the Midwest through protein-rich food donations. The Farmland FFA Heartland Grant Program was launched this summer and was an extension of that tour.
During the truck tour, Farmland served over 7,500 community meals to Heartland residents, donated $150,000 to FFA at the national and state-level, and provided more than 245,000 servings of protein to benefit Heartland neighborhoods. Farmland also teamed up with the National Pork Board and Luke Bryan’s Farm Tour to supply truckloads of protein to local food banks in Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota, bringing the product donation total for this year’s tour to an estimated one million servings of protein.
“We’re constantly proud of the dedication of our talented FFA members and the enthusiasm they bring each and every day,” said Molly Ball, president for the National FFA Foundation and chief marketing officer for the National FFA Organization. “This generous donation will equip our students with much-needed resources so that they can stay focused on achieving their ambitions and making a valuable impact within the industry. We extend our sincerest gratitude to the team at Farmland for helping make this possible.”
