‘Truly honored’

Vilonia graduate named FFA national president

Taylor McNeel stands Nov. 6 with a publicity photograph of herself displayed in the state Capitol in Little Rock, where she held a press conference a few days after being named national FFA president at a convention in Louisville, Ky. McNeel, 20, graduated from Vilonia High School and is an agri-business major with a Spanish minor at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia. The weeklong process of gaining the office included taking a test, writing an essay, making a speech and spending time with selection-committee members before being named from among 41 candidates.
Taylor McNeel stands Nov. 6 with a publicity photograph of herself displayed in the state Capitol in Little Rock, where she held a press conference a few days after being named national FFA president at a convention in Louisville, Ky. McNeel, 20, graduated from Vilonia High School and is an agri-business major with a Spanish minor at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia. The weeklong process of gaining the office included taking a test, writing an essay, making a speech and spending time with selection-committee members before being named from among 41 candidates.

Taylor McNeel of Vilonia is known for her agriculture activities, but she looked like a track star as she sprinted onstage after she was named national FFA president.

“It was such a crazy moment; that’s how elections go,” she said.

Her Twitter account has a video of the moment on Halloween at the national FFA convention in Louisville, Kentucky, when she was chosen from among 41 students to lead the national FFA organization.The hopeful students put their arms around each other and swayed as the last office, president, was announced.

“I said, ‘OK, God, whatever happens, I’m ready for it,’” McNeel said, adding that a peace came over her.

McNeel, a former state FFA president, is a junior at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, where she is a member of the Honors College. An agri-business major with a Spanish minor, she’ll delay graduation for a year as she travels extensively meeting with FFA chapters and foundations and going to conventions.

“I hope to travel somewhere I can speak Spanish,” she said.

McNeel and the five other national officers will visit 40 states next year and travel about 100,000 miles. She said they’ll take a trip together to Japan for two weeks and, in February, will travel by themselves.

“We got to make a wish list,” she said, and hers was to visit FFA chapters in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. “I’d like to be able to go to their conventions. I think that would be really cool.”

The daughter of John and Laura McNeel of Vilonia, the 20-year-old said her parents, grandparents and brother, Mathew, were in attendance at the convention. Her brother is a member of the Vilonia FFA, where she got her start.

McNeel was welcomed home with a press conference Nov. 6 in Little Rock.

“Oh, my goodness; it was so crazy just to see all those people. I saw a lot of faces of people I knew who had really helped me get to this point,” she said. “A friend said, ‘You’ve been preparing for this moment your whole life.’”

McNeel said a reception was held for her at SAU, too, where she is a President’s Ambassador and helps to recruit students. McNeel said she looked around that room and saw people who had invested in her and supported her, “and I was truly honored to come home to that,” she said.

SAU President Trey Berry said the school is honored to have McNeel as a student, too.

He said McNeel has done a “wonderful job” as an ambassador.

“I met her her freshman year. The thing I always say is this, the thing I was struck by was her intelligence, her integrity and her drive as a person, but really, the thing that struck me was her humility,” Berry said. “Even with all the things she’s done, she’s always stayed Taylor, and her humility is there. She has a servant’s heart; that makes her unique as a person.”

With all her accolades, she has stayed “very true to herself,” Berry said, which will serve her well as national FFA president and in life.

“We couldn’t be more proud,” he said.

Her path to the national FFA presidency started when she got involved in 4-H as a 10-year-old, after her family moved from Michigan to Vilonia.

“Both my parents are from the South, and they wanted to get my brother and me involved in 4-H,” she said. “We have a small family farm there, and I had about 25 goats when I was growing up and ran that herd,” she said. McNeel said her parents grew up participating in 4-H, and her dad was in FFA and showed cattle and horses.

McNeel showed livestock at the Faulkner County Fair and was successful, winning awards there and at the Arkansas State Fair.

“I started showing rabbits, actually, and then I got a horse,” she said. McNeel also showed market goats and boar goats. She started taking agriculture classes in the ninth grade at Vilonia.

“I loved having a class I could go to during the day that I was passionate about,” she said.

Harold McCain was her agriculture teacher for four years and one of her mentors, she said.

McCain said he was fortunate to teach McNeel.

“Taylor was somebody really special, a once-in-a-million deal,” he said. “She is just so down to earth, super smart and had a lot of passion, as time went by, for FFA. She has a big passion for agriculture and the agriculture way of life.”

He said McNeel is “good with kids and dedicated to doing whatever she wants to do.”

McCain said her election to state president was “an honor in itself,” and that Vilonia educators and fellow FFA students were proud of her. To be elected national FFA president “is kind of icing on the cake for me being an ag teacher for 28 years,” he said.

McNeel received a full scholarship to attend SAU, the Hallman Scholarship for a female in the college of science and technology, which includes agriculture.

“They’re going to hold the scholarship for me for a year, which is nice,” McNeel said.

She was back at SAU briefly, and in December, she will report to the National FFA Center in Indianapolis for training, she said. McNeel is only the second Arkansan to be named president of the national FFA organization. The first was John Haid of Siloam Springs, who served in 1956-57.

McNeel said she’s living her purpose.

“We look at agriculture, and there are over 300 careers that students can go into, from the farmer producing the product, food scientists, food-inspection people, implement dealers” and much more, she said. The [U.S. Department of Agriculture] — they estimate 22 million jobs are related to agriculture in this country. Agriculture touches all parts of people’s lives. It’s not just your traditional farmer; there are so many other opportunities.

“There’s definitely some challenges we have in agriculture, but that’s also, from my perspective, exciting.

“One thing that’s really big in agriculture — the average age [of a farmer] is 57. How can we get younger people involved in farming and ultimately have them invested in the long term?”

McNeel said she feels it’s her duty to help the next generation of students develop a love of agriculture.

“I love being around students and just helping them and just help creating that environment where students feel welcome and help them succeed and find a passion, and I think FFA can help them do that,” she said.

After McNeel “retired from state office,” she said, she served an internship in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Arkansas, who serves on the House

Agriculture Committee.

“It was really cool to see his role … and how that works,” she said.

McNeel said she would like to pursue working on agriculture policy in Washington after she graduates.

First things first, though.

“This next year, I hope to just be able to go out there and meet all our FFA members and sponsors and supporters and share with them the message of what FFA is. A term that I’ve heard is ‘living palms up.’ Anything given to you, you give to others,” she said. “I really

encourage students to live a life like that — how can we take the blessings we have and give them to others?”

For McNeel, it’s putting on the iconic blue corduroy jacket and spreading the word about FFA.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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