Eight students of the Fairbanks FFA recently toured with the Marysville FFA Chapter various commodities of the Southern Agriculture Industry. Due to the snow in the South it made for a postponed trip at the beginning, but the students were able to depart Thursday where they headed to Georgia for the first tour. The Georgia State Agriculture Museum, or the Agrorama, was a historical venue of antique machinery, print shop, school house, and farmstead. The students were able to participate in grinding corn meal the old fashioned way and watch how the early newspapers were printed. After the Agrorama, students were able to grab some real southern barbeque at Pit Stop BBQ. The trip continued with the ultimate destination, Sea World in Orlando, Florida. The students took a behind the scenes tour of the various exhibits and were able to touch a shark, penguin, and sting ray. The group stayed in the Arctic exhibit overnight. The girls were able to view the beluga whales and the boys camped out in the polar bear exhibit. Sea World provided a rehabilitation course the next day on Sea Turtles and Manatees. Last year Sea World rescued numerous sea turtles due to the oil spill in the gulf and the cold weather in Florida. After leaving Sea World, the group headed to Cypress Lake for an air boat tour and viewed many alligators in their natural habitat. The rest of the trip consisted in stops to Fort Valley University for their small ruminant animal research, University of Georgia to tour the Poultry hatching and processing facility, a precision Agriculture Farm in South Carolina and ended with the Pee Dee Research Facility in Florence, South Carolina to view their bio-fuels and cotton trials. The students who attended the trip were: Garrett Leeds, Josh Rausch, Emily Ober, Cole Ledley, Hal Jackson, Ryan Nicol, Jake Reed, and Danielle Burns. Mrs. Carney Fairbanks FFA Advisor accompanied them on the trip.
