Understanding FFA Competitions and Career Development Events
FFA competitions let students apply agricultural knowledge and practice leadership skills under a common set of rules. Career Development Events, or CDEs, emphasize skills connected to agriculture and natural resources careers. Leadership Development Events, or LDEs, focus on skills such as speaking, running a meeting and interviewing. Local, state and national events can differ, so the handbook for the event you will actually enter matters more than the trophy list on a school wall.
Learn what competitors do
In a career development event, a team might evaluate plants, make decisions about agricultural products, or use a set of records to solve a problem. Some events measure individual work, team performance or a mix of both. In a leadership development event, students may prepare a speech, answer questions in an interview or carry out assigned business in a mock meeting. The exact tasks are in each event’s current handbook. A student who signs up for a judging event will eventually discover that “I like that one” is a complete opinion and a remarkably short set of reasons.
Choose for interest and schedule
Ask your advisor which events the chapter offers and whether there is a qualification path. Attend a practice before committing to an entire season. One student might like the precision of comparing plants. Another might enjoy the challenge of preparing spoken reasons. If travel or a practice schedule could pose problems, bring it up early. Events are easier to enjoy when everybody knows how they will get home after practice.
Read the scoring sheet before practicing
Mark the tasks that carry points, the time limits, allowed equipment and any automatic penalties. Take an initial practice run using those conditions to find the weak spots. Separate preparation into small sessions. A student who loses time reading questions might practice sorting information and recording answers. A student who knows the subject but speaks too quickly might record a short explanation and make one change per rehearsal. Trying to improve everything on Tuesday generally results in a very long Tuesday.
Learn to debrief without blaming teammates
After a practice, write down a mistake, its possible cause and a change to test. If a team misreads a work order, figure out at what point someone should have checked it. If time ran out, ask which task consumed the most minutes. Then repeat the exercise with the adjustment. Review the final results privately with your advisor and use them to plan a better practice. The score shows where the team lost points, while a careful debrief can show why.
Plan for event day
Check arrival time, clothing, materials, transportation and who will handle any upload or paperwork. Ask whether substitutions and changes to the team roster follow special procedures. Bring only what the rules allow. If your competition takes you from local to state to national level, reread the new rules each time. A precedent from last year makes a lovely story in a van and a poor answer to an eligibility question.
The National FFA CDE and LDE resource center offers national handbooks and updates. Ask your advisor for the state and local versions.