I created “The Profitable SAE Student Workbook” to help FFA Advisors teach marketing methods to their students and to help FFA Students succeed in their entrepreneurship SAE’s. I hope you find this product as beneficial as all of the interviews I conducted to create it were to me!

OFI 104: Sorghum Syrup and BBQ Sauce Production | FFA SAE Edition | Kaitlyn Elliot | Boyle County High School FFA

SHOW NOTES:

Off Farm Income’s Website: www.offincome.com

INTRODUCING KAITLYN ELLIOT!

I am so excited about this interview with Kaitlyn Elliot.  It has everything!  Family Tradition, Complete Vertical Integration (Production, Processing, Value Adding and Marketing), and extremely innovative marketing methods.

Kaitlyn Elliot graduated high school in 2015 but is still participating in FFA through her high school chapter while she takes classes at the University of Kentucky.  Kaitlyn’s family has been growing sorghum for four generations, and she has partnered with her grandfather to grow and produce products from their land’s sorghum.

Kaitlyn owns and operates “Poorhouse Sorghum.”  She grows her own sorghum, completely chemical free starting in the spring and going through the summer.  Then she harvests her crop and processes the sorghum into syrup.  But she does not stop there.  Then she bottles her syrup and also makes sorghum barbeque sauce.

Once she has an inventory of product she starts marketing.  She has a Facebook Page, business cards and a stand at her local farmer’s market.  In addition to all of that she takes product and gives presentations and workshops at civic organizations.  These presentations are not just marketing either.  She is educating the public about the uses of sorghum.  She explains that it is kind of a lost food product, and she is doing her part to bring it back.

You are going to really enjoy hearing from Kaitlyn!

SUPERVISED AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE: Growing, Harvesting & Processing Sorghum – Then making value added syrup and barbeque sauce and marketing her products

HIGH SCHOOL: Boyle County High School

MASCOT: Rebels

FFA ADVISOR: Mrs. Toni Myers and Mr. Matthew Whitaker

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR KAITLYN ELLIOT:

Click on the picture below to be taken to the Boyle County High School website:

Kaitlyn’s FFA Advisors’ Email Addresses: toni.myers@boyle.kyschools.us or matthew.whitaker@boyle.kyschools.us

Boyle County High School’s Telephone Number: 859.236.5047

Kaitlyn’s Facebook Page: Poorhouse Sorghum

Kaitlyn’s Telephone Number: (859) 481-5678

FFA LINKS:

National FFA Organization

Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE’s)

Support FFA 

Donate to FFA – One way that FFA students are able to start small businesses is through an FFA grant of $1,000.  In 2014, 141 FFA students received these grants.  With your donations, more students can get this head start – pay it forward.

REASONS TO DONATE TO FFA:

• Only 2% of Americans grow and raise most of the food and livestock consumed by the other 98% as well as the rest of the world.  FFA is providing the needed education, training and resources to Americans that will carry that torch forward and insure that America continues to have inexpensive, quality food.
• Rural Communities will rely on entrepreneurship in the future for population growth and job creation.  The FFA is a major catalyst to that entrepreneurial growth.
• Farmers, ranchers and those working in agriculture give the rest of America incredible amounts of freedom because the search for food is as simple as going to the grocery store:

“Because American farmers are able to provide for so many of us, they give more and more of us the freedom to pursue goals and livelihoods beyond growing the food we need to survive.”

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack 

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