Add a few hundred Boonville teenagers to the list of Missourians who spent part of their summer packing meals for hungry neighbors instead of just riding the midway.
The Boonville FFA Chapter took part in this year’s Drive to Feed Kids initiative at the 2026 Missouri State Fair, joining more than 782 FFA members from 95 chapters across the state in an assembly-line meal-packing effort. Together, the group packed 252,564 meals — food headed to Missouri families facing food insecurity. This year’s push was tied to a theme honoring America’s 250th anniversary.
Drive to Feed Kids has become an annual fixture of State Fair week, turning the fairgrounds into a temporary meal-packing operation where FFA chapters from every corner of Missouri — including ours in Cooper County — take a shift on the line. For the Boonville students who showed up, it meant a few hours of measuring, scooping, and sealing packages instead of showing livestock or walking the exhibit halls, work that turns into food on someone else’s table long after the fair packs up for the year.
It’s the kind of story that’s easy to walk past in a summer full of fair news — livestock judging, ribbon winners, grandstand concerts — but 252,564 meals is a number worth pausing on. That’s a lot of dinners for families who needed one, and a lot of teenagers who chose to spend a fair day working a packing line for people they’ll never meet.
The Boonville Daily News has the story, with more on the chapter’s participation and the broader Drive to Feed Kids effort at this year’s fair.
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