Alyssa Hoag hopes to operate a farm one day and may be on her way to doing so based on her results at the New York State Future Farmers of America Convention in Buffalo on May 18-20.
The student in the Careers in Animal and Plant Sciences program at Dutchess BOCES’ Career & Technical Institute placed second on the Farm and Agriculture Business Management written test.
“I was very surprised,” the Arlington High School student said. “I thought I did fairly well, but I didn’t expect to do that well.”
The test, which consisted of 50 multiple choice questions, was the first of two parts in the Farm and Agriculture Business Management competition.
The second part was a group project for Hoag and two of her classmates. 
Hoag was one of eight high school juniors from CTI to attend the convention.
The CTI students, who were among the 2,000-plus FFA participants at the convention, participated in workshops and other activities offered by the convention.
The students and their two adult chaperones also toured the Buffalo region, visiting the Buffalo Museum of Science, taking a Maid of the Mist boat tour of Niagara Falls, and enjoying a meal at the Anchor Bar, where Buffalo wings originated.
“I just really liked the idea of challenging students to try something new and for each individual it’s probably a little different, but on a whole, they got a lot out of the trip,” said Rebecca Cossa, CTI agriculture teacher and FFA advisor. “They enjoyed it for what the FFA and Buffalo had to offer.”
Ashley Keck found the trip to be fun and educational.
“We were there to have fun, but everywhere you turned, you were learning something new. You learned a lot everywhere you went,” said the Arlington High School studentNoah Curtis, a student from Pine Plains, highlighted the Maid of the Mist boat tour.
“We sat under the falls for about a minute, getting pelted with all this water,” he said. “That was memorable and that was really cool.”
