‘I want to help protect the food industry’: Outstanding FFA Member of the year Evan Roden eyes a career in agricultural cybersecurity
Published 6:36 am Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Evan Roden at the 2024 Alabama National Fair showing the Reserve Champion Market Lamb. Courtesy photo
For generations of students in Cullman County, high school membership in the Future Farmers of America (FFA) has proffered not only a gateway into farming, but into lives well lived.
“I would say one of the main great things about FFA is the friendships that you make,” said Holly Pond Agricultural Science teacher Rusty Roden, who serves as the faculty advisor for the school’s robust FFA program.
“Work ethic, time management, making lasting friendships — all the things you need to know as an adult — I think that’s what FFA is. It’s probably FFA’s ‘superpower.’ It brings kids from all different areas in, it combines them and it gives them a common goal.”
Through a 34-year teaching career that’s spanned FFA stints at both West Point and, currently, at Holly Pond, Roden probably knows what he’s talking about. Himself a Holly Pond grad and generational farmer, he’s seem students grow from tentative FFA first-timers into established agricultural-industry professionals with extraordinarily successful careers.
Whether the focus is local or nationwide, Roden likes to think of FFA as one big extended family; an able group whose agricultural interests remain connected through hard work, friendship and shared values. But thanks to the ongoing FFA accomplishments of Evan Roden — a Holly Pond senior and Rusty’s 18 year-old son — “family” feels like more than just a metaphor these days.
Fresh off earning the local Farm City Committee’s Outstanding FFA Member of the year award for Cullman County, Evan hardly has time to count the FFA achievements he’s collected in only the past year alone. Eyeing a future college path in Agricultural Economics with a cutting-edge emphasis in cybersecurity, he’s in the midst of a current term as president of the the Cullman County Junior Cattlemen’s Association; the vice president of the Alabama Junior Lamb Board and as the FFA president at Holly Pond.
Raising and showing sheep is Evan’s specialty, though he’s been deeply involved in agriculture as a student — first in 4-H and later in FFA — for most of his life. “I got Evan his first sheep when he was six, thinking ‘That’s a good introduction — let him get used to it; get used to the basics’ — and he just fell in love with that,” says Rusty. “We do sheep and cattle now, but his passion is really the sheep part of it. It’s become like a natural habit for him.”
Casual observers may think of FFA as an organization that’s all about crops and livestock, but the educational opportunities it affords its students — especially at high-participation places like Holly Pond — extend much farther.
“It’s a lot larger than that,” says Rusty, who leads an FFA program that encompasses 120 Holly Pond students. “We have a young lady who’s been one of the best in the state, these past couple of years, in speaking contests. She was third in the state in her freshman year in creed speaking — speaking the FFA creed. Last year, she was third in the state in extemporaneous speaking. I have a team that was third in the state this past year in floor culture; actually for the past two years in a row. I have a team that placed at state for meats evaluation. I have an Ag Mechanics team. I have a poultry team. There’s a horse team, a building construction team, a welding team. There’s just so many different things you can do in FFA.”
Evan’s interest in agricultural cybersecurity is only one example of how the organization helps foster innovative thinking as farming itself embraces constant change. “I want to help protect the food industry,” says Evan. “There have already been companies that have gotten hacked, and it cost them a lot of good information and a lot of money. That’s only going to become a bigger and bigger thing as time goes on. I think that cybersecurity is going to play a larger role in the agriculture industry as the years go by, and it’s important, because the backbone of any society is its agriculture — and that’s something I want to protect.”
Not every FFA student graduates into a career in agriculture, of course. But the agricultural lessons they learn in high school tend to stay with them all throughout their lives.
“It teaches them life skills,” says Rusty: “Learning how to make friends; learning how to speak and get out of your comfort zone. I think FFA is just phenomenal at getting kids out of their comfort zone and making them grow. At West Point and at Holly Pond, I’ve seen what it does for people. It’s really amazing — even in just the doors that it’s opened for Evan — and I could tell story after story about how it’s opened doors for so many of my students. If you expose kids to hard work and learning self discipline through FFA, they can take those lessons and go as far as they want to go — not just in farming, but in life.”
