The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
F-B FFA Agronomy Team, left to right: Westin Opdahl, Donavin Bartz, Logan Schimelfenig, Ryan Snively and Gavin Mason
Ag Sales team: Delaney Erfle
Livestock Judging team, left to right: Bella Long and Hanna Widicker
Eight members of the Fessenden-Bowdon FFA Chapter recently traveled to the N.D. State Fair Center in Minot to participate in the Winter CDE championships for Agronomy, Livestock and Ag Sales Career Development Events on Monday, March 18.
Five members of the Fessenden-Bowdon FFA Chapter participated in the State FFA Agronomy Career Development Event and earned the honor of being named the top FFA Agronomy team in the state of North Dakota.
Four members finished in the top 10 overall. Gavin Mason led the way with a fifth place finish while Ryan Snively tied for seventh and Westin Opdahl and Donavin Bartz finished ninth and tenth overall. Logan Schimelfenig, another eighth grader along with Opdahl, finished just one spot from a gold award and earned silver in his first state agronomy event.
There were a total of 228 individual judges from 63 schools competing in the event. The state Agronomy event has students identify crop and weed seeds as well as crop and weed plants in North Dakota. They also participate in practicums involving insects, agronomic disorders, machinery and equipment, grain grading, soil survey interpretation and seed selection. The team problem consists of calculating planting rate, fertilizer calculations and interpreting the North Dakota Weed Control Guide.
Fessenden-Bowdon was also represented in the state livestock judging event. This year the team had just two judges participating all year but the two of them made great strides in their knowledge and reasons. Bella Long and Hanna Widicker both earned middle silver awards and did exceptionally well.
In the livestock evaluation CDE, each participant judged two sets of beef, sheep and swine and gave an oral interpretation to judges on one set of each of the three species. Members also interpreted a keep/cull problem and took a livestock knowledge exam.
The Agriculture Sales team was small this year with just Delaney Erfle competing. Delaney sold a Vet Gun for her sales presentation and took an Ag Sales knowledge exam. Delaney finished as a silver award recipient.
