Hundreds of FFA students recently competed at Checotah. On Monday, April 7, FFA Zach Ilbery along with the OSU Ext. office had their hands full with two huge events hosted by Checotah FFA.
First was the Land Judging competition that brought in 119 students to the Checotah Sports Complex. Chris Hobbs with Natural Resource Conservation Service helped with the competition.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that assists farmers and landowners with conserving land and natural resources.
While land judging is a high school competition that challenges students to gain a better understanding of soil structure and land evaluation. It enables each student to learn how to recognize the physical features of the soil, determine land capability for crop production, and evaluate management practices needed for proper stewardship.
Students look at a variety of factors: soil texture, the depth of soil, the slope of the ground, erosion factors, permeability of the subsoil, and surface runoff.
The conservation of many soil resources may one day depend upon the expertise of this next generation of farmers and there are many job opportunities within this field.
Later that afternoon Ilbery hosted another FFA event at the Checotah High School were a roomful of community judges had the privilege of judging 458 FFA students in different competitive speech subjects.
The four different speaking competitions in FFA are creed speaking, prepared speaking, extemporaneous speaking and employment skills.
Then there are more areas inside of those:
• Creed – 9th grade only
• Prepared
• Animal Science
• Ag Science
• Plant Science
• 4 Natural Resources • 8-10th Grade • 8&9th Grade General • 7 Ag Policy
• Extemporaneous
• Employment Skills Interview One judge Jason McPeak stated why he always helps with the competition each year.
“As a past National speech winner in Conservation of Natural Resources, I want to help our students achieve at the highest level. Although I was a scholarship baseball player all four years of college, I was also able to win over $3,000 in addition scholarships through public speaking. Those experiences and lessons allowed me to speak confidently to large groups of people and being good at public speaking will literally serve you every day of your life. So I enjoy mentoring the next generation.”
This competition was one of the largest speech competitions in the state and literally takes a community to accomplish it each year.
OSU Ext. extended a special thanks to the City Of Checotah for preparing the field sites and for Chris Hobbs with Natural Resource Conservation Service for coming out to help with all these entries.
Ilbery extended his gratitude for everyone who showed up to judge the speech competition which went for several hours.
