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Ag Bowl

Competition at SMSU tests student knowledge in agriculture

Photos by Jenny Kirk Southwest Minnesota State University student Lauren Roiger holds up a sign as she leads the way for about 50 FFA students getting ready to compete in the small animal competition — one of 18 different Career Development Events offered — at the 2019 Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational on Friday on the SMSU campus.

MARSHALL — More than 650 FFA members from the region engaged in various educational competitions at the Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational on Friday at Southwest Minnesota State University.

As an extension of the annual Ag Bowl, the invite is a celebration of agriculture in southwest Minnesota.

“The vision of the original Ag Bowl (more than 10 years ago) was to be a celebration of agriculture, to encourage students to pursue careers in the community that would be involved in agriculture as well,” said Paul Lanoue, dean of management and business for Minnesota West Community and Technical College. “Being a former ag teacher myself, I knew the value of quality contest, so we wanted to create an experience for the students so they’d have an understanding of what SMSU and any other agricultural school has to offer and then to help them grow in their experiences.”

Lanoue said the Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational has grown a lot since it was established in 2012.

“We started with three different contests that focused on leadership, and I believe we had 12 students that first year,” he said. “Then we expanded the contest to include 18 competitions now and we had well over 700 students register. That’s the highest we’ve ever had.”

The 18 Career Development Events (CDEs) are in a contest format based on Minnesota CDEs. Team competitions included: ag issues, parliamentary procedure and conduct of chapter meetings. Students also had the opportunity to choose employment skills, ag sales, extemporaneous public speaking, milk quality, farm business management, fish and wildlife, prepared public speaking, creed speaking, floriculture, small animal veterinary science, crops, forestry, soils or best informed greenhand. A new category this year — meats (identification only) — was also offered as a competition event.

“The identification of meats was something we partnered with Hy-Vee for,” said Jennifer Graven, executive director of the SMSU Mustang Booster Club and Athletics Director of Marketing and Promotions. “We had 62 students registered for that competition.”

The organizers believe that student attendance may have soared to around 800 had it not been for a couple of factors.

“We had some scheduling issues with other schools not being able to make it,” Lanoue said.

Graven added that the cold, blustery winter conditions also kept some FFA chapters from attending, but that the majority of the students were able to participate.

“As of Thursday, we had close to 750 students registered from 33 schools,” Graven said. “The actual attendance was less than that because we had chapters that started school late (on Friday) or had to drop out because students had been missing too many days of school the past two weeks.”

Area schools that were among the FFA chapters in attendance included: Canby, Marshall, Minnesota, Red Rock Central, Russell-Tyler-Ruthton, Tracy Area, Wabasso and Westbrook-Walnut Grove.

“It absolutely went great,” Graven said about the 2019 event. “We’re so fortunate to have great corporate sponsors. Their employees come and help judge and interact with our students. They expose them to different jobs available in the ag industry.”

Corporate sponsors include: Ralco, Action Sports, ADM, Channel, CHS, Golden Harvest, Lockwood Motors, Lyon County Corn and Soybean Growers, Marshall Animal Clinic, Midwest Ag Enterprises, Minnesota Corn Growers Association, Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council and Titan Macjkirk@marshallindependent.comhinery.

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