Having just completed his term as State FFA Vice President, Carroll County resident Austin Larrowe is in the running for a national Future Farmers of America office.

Larrowe, a 2009 Carroll County High School graduate and son of County Administrator Gary Larrowe and Vicki Ostrander is Virginia’s nominee for national office, making him one of 51 candidates for six spots.

Larrowe said the process for earning Virginia’s nomination was stringent, but it should prepare him well for October’s National Convention in Indianapolis, at which the six officers will be chosen.

“Virginia is allowed to send one candidate from the state level to the national level for the process and we’ve been working on it for the last couple of months and selecting this year’s candidate,” Larrowe said. “It was a pretty intense process because everybody was well qualified. The state process is modeled after the national process from one-on-one interviews to stakeholder interviews to essays and a written test about Ag knowledge and FFA facts.”

Larrowe is certainly well versed in both. At the Virginia State Convention in Blacksburg on June 24, Larrowe was one of two Carroll County representatives to earn first place in a competition. Larrowe was first in Home and/or Community Development Proficiency while Brandon Leonard won State Diversified Crop Production Proficiency.

Larrowe also received Virginia’a nomination for National Office at the Convention. He said he’s thrilled to have the opportunity.

“It’s a huge honor to be representing Virginia to go to the national level,” he said. “I’m excited about this wonderful opportunity to represent Virginia FFA and Carroll County. I’m going to work hard and try my absolute best to do the best I can and go from there.”

If he is successful in earning one of the six national office spots, many perks await, including a visit to the White House.

“There’s a lot of cool things going on associated with it,” Larrowe said. “I know some of the statistics national FFA complied is national officers it’s over 300 days out of the year on the road covering over 100,000 miles. Most people go to about 40 different states and have several international experiences throughout the year as well.”

But Larrowe won’t have to wait to have an international experience. Later in July, he and five other FFA alumni will depart for Zambia, in Africa, for three weeks as part of FFA’s GO Africa program. The program is funded by the Howard Buffett Foundation.

“While there, we’ll be teaching about sustainable agriculture and trying to learn as much as possible to bring back to the U.S. about the situation and structure of their agricultural situation to go back and teach them and help them what we’re doing and help them do some things to sustain themselves,” Larrowe said.

Two days after returning stateside, Larrowe will then face another challenge as he begins college at Virginia Tech.

“I will be coming through, flying into Dulles and then we have a couple of days of debriefing and then I will drive to Tech and try to get a couple hours sleep and start class,” he said.