FFA students including Carter Case of Lake Crystal, and Quentin Gosser of Russell-Tyler-Ruthton, took part in the milk quality and products competitive event at the Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational. Students had to evaluate a variety of dairy products, including milk, butter and different kinds of cheese.

MARSHALL — Agriculture is an industry with connections to a lot of different career paths and skills. And at the Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational, Minnesota high school students were demonstrating those skills at the campus of Southwest Minnesota State University.

“You’d never be doing these kinds of things at regular school,” Wabasso student Allison Jordan said. On Friday morning, Jordan and fellow Wabasso FFA members were completing food science challenges, like identifying different aromas and sample foods.

On the other end of campus, other students were quietly studying mock financial statements.

“Our team is doing farm business management,” Luverne FFA member Charlie Mostad explained after the event. Students had to analyze a set of balance sheets, he said.

Speakers said about 1,300 FFA students from schools across Minnesota took part in the competition at this year’s Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational, which was presented by Ralco Nutrition at SMSU. Students could compete individually or as teams in a variety of Career Development Events, or CDEs, related to different topics in agriculture.

Top FFA chapters, teams and students in the competition receive scholarship dollars to SMSU. Proceeds from SMSU’s Ag Bowl and the Ag Bowl Scholarship Invitational help fund scholarships and university programming.

“The future of agriculture depends on you, and there are so many ways for you to be part of it,” SMSU Provost Ross Wastvedt said as he welcomed students. Wastvedt said fields of study from finance to biology and nursing all help support farms and rural communities.

Tracey DeSmet, director of marketing for Ralco, encouraged students interested in agriculture to stay curious, to be resilient when facing challenges, and to be open to collaborating with others.

“When you compete today, remember that you aren’t just performing or answering questions. You are practicing the skills that will take an idea from Minnesota to a dinner table on the other side of the planet,” DeSmet said.

Throughout the day, different CDE events tested students’ knowledge of different ag topics.

“You kind of just look at what your interests are,” said Luverne FFA member Kale Versteeg.

When it came to the farm business management CDE, Mostad said, “I was very interested, definitely.” He joked that he “kind of drug along” teammate Lucas Madison.

Mostad, Versteeg and Madison said they enjoyed the social aspects of being part of FFA, and they’ve also learned a lot from it.

Students also got to demonstrate their skills through some hands-on challenges at the Ag Bowl Invitational. For part of the food science and technology CDE, teams of students were given the task of developing and presenting a new food product. In this case, teams had to create specialty condiments that could be served with hot dogs. Another challenge was a triangle test, where students had to see if they could tell the difference between sets of food samples.

“It’s our first time doing food science,” said Wabasso FFA member Leah Lightfoot. The variety of events and the chance to try new things were part of FFA and the Ag Bowl’s appeal, Lightfoot and her team members said.

“It’s fun to go to these events, meet new people and try new things,” she said.