INDIANAPOLIS – More than 20 agricultural teachers and college professors from throughout the U.S. recently met virtually to determine what FFA members and teams will compete for top honors in the 2023 National FFA Agriscience Fair.

Gilroy High School students, Adrian Figueroa and Shuhong Gao, of the Gilroy FFA chapter, have been named as national finalists this year in the Social Sciences category in the Division 4 of the competition.

Gilroy High School's FFA Advisor, Allyah Perez, shared information about their study:

The study was conducted to research public opinion and knowledge on Genetically Modified Organisms.  This experiment was conducted to survey people of all age groups ranging from 12 to 60+ through an electronic and physical Google Form, to determine how much a person of a certain age group knows about GMOs and their opinions of Genetically Modified crops. In total, there were 120 individuals who completed the survey. The survey tested whether a participant prefers to eat Organic, GMO, or no preference for all foods. This experiment also tested the participants' view of GMOs on human health and if they believed they had positive effects, negative effects, or no effects at all on our health and well-being. The results and data collected from this experiment, allowed us to conclude and discover that our participants of ages 12-20 had the most knowledge of GMOs and viewed GMOs as a positive farming practice while, our participants of ages 60+ had the least knowledge of GMOs and had a negative outlook towards the farming practice and its effect on our health.

The National FFA Agriscience Fair is a key competition that is part of the annual National FFA Convention & Expo, Nov. 1-4, 2023, in Indianapolis. To qualify, FFA members working as individuals or teams in grades seven through 12 are required to conduct a scientific research project pertaining to the agriculture or food science industries and win their state’s FFA agriscience fair.

Individuals or teams compete in one of six categories – animal systems; environmental services/natural resource systems; food products and processing systems; plant systems; power, structural and technical systems; or social science – in six divisions – individuals in grades 7-8, teams grades 7-8, individuals grades 9-10, teams grades 9-10, individuals in grades 11-12, and teams grades 11-12.

First-place winners in each state have qualified for the national pre-qualifying judging. The panel of judges reviewed entries and selected a maximum of 12 in each category and division to move on to the national competition. For a complete list of results, check here: https://www.ffa.org/participate/awards/agriscience-fair/.

####

The National FFA Organization is a school-based national youth leadership development organization of more than 945,000 student members as part of 9,163 local FFA chapters in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands