Will this generation earn more or have more than their parents?

Leslie Meyer, Audrain County Eastern District associate commissioner, poses this question frequently when discussing economic mobility or the ability of an individual to achieve economic success.

Audrain County is getting ready to roll out a new grant program in the 2025-26 school year in the name of economic mobility aimed toward giving young entrepreneurs a leg up with their supervised agriculture experience. It will be using funds received from the Rural Leaders of Economic Mobility grant funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Meyer learned about the grant through her involvement in the National Association of Counties. She, Western District County Associate Commissioner Tracy Graham and Executive Director of the Mexico Area Chamber of Commerce Dana Keller went through the application process last March.

“NACO selected 10 teams across the country to participate and our application was one of the teams selected,” Meyer said.

The grant total is $50,000 and $24,000 of that will be split equally among the three Audrain County high schools for the Audrain County SAE grant. The rest will be put back into existing economic mobility efforts in Audrain County.

“We are going to reinvest in the Mexico Sustainability Project and try to expand that as well as the WRAP (Workforce Resource Assistance Program) program for the eastern side of Audrain County,” Meyer said. “Right now, both WRAP and the Getting Ahead classes are mostly focused in the Mexico area; this will help open it up to the eastern side.”

When a student in FFA chooses an SAE, they have the opportunity to grow them into businesses or take a path that will help them utilize the skills they learned to earn more money and go further in their careers.

Meyer said that an SAE can ignite a passion for something or allow them to meet a need in the community and the grant will be there to assist them.

“Maybe they live in Laddonia and the student sees that there’s a lot of neighbors that need their lawns mowed and I could do a mowing business for my SAE but maybe that student doesn’t have enough money to purchase a used mower,” Meyer said. “This grant would actually allow them to do that.”

Investing in these SAEs is not just beneficial to the students’ experience but the community as well.

Meyer uses local business owner John Graham as an example. He started Callaway Fields as an SAE when he was in high school. His successful greenhouse that started in Shamrock allowed him to eventually relocate to Mexico where he expanded and opened an additional brick and mortar retail shop downtown.

Meyer also speaks from experience as a parent who has watched her own children profit from their SAEs.

“Their SAEs have been to buy cattle, fatten them up for locker beefs and sell them and that has actually helped our oldest daughter now that she is in college; she has used those funds to help pay for some things in school,” Meyer said. “It's given her a little nest egg.”

In the fall 2025 semester, each school will have $8,000 available to FFA students and the distribution of funds will be largely left up to the individual agriculture instructors: Stacy French of Community R-6, Clair Lavy and Micah Bailey of Van-Far and Christina Terry of Mexico.

“Stacy French has helped develop this where they’re going to have to showcase a budget, they’re going to have to discuss why the community needs that service, they’re going to have to communicate effectively as to how they’re going to utilize that money,” Meyer said. “It’s also teaching them skills that they too will need either as a business owner or hopefully as a leader in whatever path they choose.”

Meyer hopes that this program will add to the economic base of the community.

“Agriculture is a very ‘trickle through’ economy,” she said. “When the ag industry has a good year, you see it everywhere.”

It is important to note that an SAE does not have to focus strictly on agriculture. Some students choose to work in veterinary clinics, while others may work in food service or another industry that they want to pursue.

“Even though we are calling a supervised agricultural experience, that’s more or less just the name of that part of the FFA program but it can touch on a variety of situations,” Meyer said.

Grants will be capped at $500 per student for the first year with the potential of offering a $250 grant for those who reapply.

“We want this to be a self-sustaining program,” Meyer said. “We want to be able to grow it and fund it and we don’t want to utilize the money all at once.”

When school starts, it will mostly be up to the teachers who Meyer calls the “heavy lifters” with her there to oversee the progress.

“I am going to have to report back to NACO and do a capstone at the end of this grant cycle, which will be in April, and let them know this is how many students benefited, this is what they chose to spend their grants on and that sort of thing,” Meyer said.

Audrain County was the first agri-ready county in the state of Missouri and agriculture is part of its backbone. All three FFA programs are recognized on both the state and national levels.

“The fact that we can even do this grant to help these students is a testament to the dedication of our three FFA chapters and advisers,” Meyer said. “Without those four advisers, I don't know if we could get this program off the ground.”

Once the money from the Rural Leaders of Economic Mobility grant is exhausted, that’s it. Meyer said the advisers will be reaching out to the FFA alumni asking them to contribute annually to keep this program going as well as looking into other funding opportunities.