By Ron Wilson, Director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

Who will be the survivor? The competition began with lots of competitors, but now it is down to the very end. And the winner is: Billy Brown from Westmoreland, Kansas.  No, I'm not talking about the woman who won on the Survivor TV show. This is a young man from rural Kansas who survived the competition to win the National FFA public speaking contest. It's today's Kansas Profile.

Since his freshman year in high school when his family was living in Texas, Billy Brown has been active in FFA, the national organization for students of agricultural education. As a freshman, he participated in a public speaking contest where new members recite the FFA Creed. Billy says with a smile, "I competed without much success."

After Billy's freshman year, his family moved to Kansas when his father accepted a new position as a dairy consultant for the Land O' Lakes Purina Feed company. His father's territory was Kansas and Nebraska. The family settled in northeast Kansas near the town of Westmoreland, population 628 people. Now, that's rural.

Billy enrolled in Rock Creek High School near Westmoreland and again became active in FFA. He was also in speech class. One day he was having difficulty picking a topic for a required speech. Billy saw his ag teacher, Mr. David Holliday, and asked him for ideas.  Mr. Holliday said, "What about the national animal identification system?"  Mr. Holliday knew that this was a timely topic in regard to a proposed system to identify and track livestock across the nation.

That sounded interesting to Billy so he started looking into it.

Not only did he find it was an excellent topic for his speech class, he developed the speech for the FFA prepared public speaking contest. Public speaking is one of several educational competitions used to help FFA members prepare for careers in agriculture. These competitions are called Career Development Events, or C-D-Es for short.

Billy explains, "For the public speaking CDE, members are to pick a current agricultural topic, write and present a six- to eight-minute informative speech on it, and then respond to five minutes of questions. The questions are very important."

Billy's speech, manuscript, and responses to questions did very well at the district CDE and advanced him to state, where he won first place. That qualified him to participate in the national CDE in Louisville, Kentucky in October 2005.

At Louisville, he advanced through the preliminary and semifinal rounds until he was one of four finalists. The other three finalists came from Texas, California, and Florida, which are some of the largest states in FFA membership. 

"I was proud that Kansas could work its way in there against that competition," he says.

In fact, when the competition was all over, Billy Brown of Westmoreland, Kansas was the national winner.

Billy says that his extensive research and practice helped his confidence. He's come a long way from that first-year student who didn't win the creed contest.

"As a freshman,” he says, “I never thought that I could form my thoughts, present them, and respond to questions in this way. It's really great to see how FFA has helped me to progress."

Billy is now serving as Kansas FFA Treasurer and is majoring in animal science with a dairy emphasis at Kansas State University. Yet he says the highlight of his FFA career was serving as a chapter officer at Rock Creek, when he was able to encourage younger members to get more involved and excited about opportunities in FFA.

He says, "I look back and find that really rewarding."

Now we know who the survivor is. No, not on some so-called reality show on television, this is the young man who survived and won the national FFA public speaking contest. We salute Billy Brown and all those FFA members who are making a difference by building their skills and encouraging other young people. Billy Brown is utilizing his skills and helping other youth develop theirs as well. With his attitude of service, I believe he will not just survive, he will thrive.

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The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. The Kansas Profile radio series and columns are produced with assistance from the K-State Research and Extension Department of Communications News Unit. Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/huckboyd/.