The next time you regard a pandemic-empty shelf in a grocery store, consider what will ensue in the virtual world, come April 23.
That’s when the (electronic) gavel gets fired up for this year’s North Central FFA Ham and Bacon Sale.
This is the 71st edition of the auction, which benefits Future Farmers of America programs at Clay-Battelle and University high schools in Monongalia County and Lincoln High in Harrison County.
It’s also the first time in auction history that the bidding will be exclusively online. COVID-19 planted that crop, organizers said.
While the auction is still two weeks out, bids on more than 60 prize hams and racks of bacon may be made now.
The auction is being conducted by Joe R. Pyle Complete Auction and Realty Service, and information on how to bid, plus particulars on payment and delivery if you win, may be found on the organization’s Facebook page.
Since 1949, the FFA auction has been a showcase of agrarian resourcefulness, ever-steady in the shifting soil of changing markets.
Of course, its teachable moments go way deeper than that, Kent Saul said.
Saul, a Clay-Battelle High science teacher who advises the school’s FFA chapter, likes the resourcefulness and responsibility involved in bringing product to auction.
“It is about responsibility,” he told The Dominion Post previously.
“Kids have to see it through.”
That means a boots-in-the-barn project that can last upwards of a year. With no days off, he said.
If it rains, he said, you still work — and ditto, for snow.
The work continues, even if you’re in the midst of a pandemic.
Which, he said, can be a lot to put on one’s plate.
However, he continued, what goes on the plate of a winning bidder is so much healthier than the fare that ends up in your shopping cart.
“Healthy” is a term not always attached to the nation’s food supply.
That’s both for the nutrition label and the cost ledger.
American farmers are independent business people whose inventories are in the form of wheat futures and cattle to market.
They’ve long seen their profit potential plowed over by conglomerate operations growing a blight of chemistry — with everything else.
Pesticides taint leaves in rows.
Chicken and cattle are fattened up with harmful additives carrying long-term effects.
Working the soil yourself, the FFA says, means growing a measure of control, no matter what happens nationally with supply and demand.
For example, Saul, in addition to his course load and FFA chapter duties, also oversees Clay-Battelle’s bustling greenhouse and aquaculture operations.
The April 23 auction, which happens at 6 p.m., is a live event, featuring an auctioneer on a video feed.
Going once, going twice, that auctioneer will also recognize the students whose work is up for bid.
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