FFA achievements celebrated
The successful Prairie Central FFA chapter was once again celebrated this week by the Fairbury Rotary club.
Kylie Miller, one of the Prairie Central ag teachers and FFA advisors, brought several students to the Rotary meeting to share their stories and successes from the National FFA Convention last month.
“They were the school representing Illinois in their respective contest,” Miller explained.
The Agriculture Sales team was fifth in the nation, which included Lainie Welborn, Ty Harms, Blake Brown and eight place individual Kaden Davis. Brayden Schrader also worked with the team in case he was needed. They had to do a customer service call for this.
“You have to figure out what that problem is and pick the best solution,” notes Brown.
Then came the written exam.
“We prepared pretty hard,” recalls Brown. “We also went to some different places to sell.”
PC’s Food Science Team was named a gold ranked team and finished seventh overall. The team included Sydney Bachtold, Naomi Bachtold, Lily Leman and Violet Kerber. Like the others, plenty of practice was required.
“We had to identify four aromas,” said Leman.
The Marketing Plan Team finished as a silver team and third in their respective room. Members were Carolyn Schmidgall, Saydee Fehr and Katelyn Stoller. They chose a product to market, which was milk from Kilgus Farmstead to promote to coffee shops around Illinois.
“The judges are role-playing as Kilgus on why they should hire us,” explains Fehr.
PC FFA’s Dairy Products team was the national champion, which included Mason Osborn, Leah Hartman, Sarah Wilken and Colter Kerber who brought home the gold. All four were also in the top 10 individually. Osborn was national champion, Hartman was reserve national champion, Wilken was sixth overall and Kerber seventh overall.
They did a team problem evaluating a dairy farm’s tests on milk along with cheese identification and a 12-question math test.
Kaden Davis was eighth individual in the nation for the Ag Sales CDE and American FFA Degree recipients included Hayden Miller, Holden Miller, Kamber Kilgus and Ellie Ellis.
Prairie Central Superintendent Brian Quam told the students they should be proud of the work they put in every single year.
“Sometimes we have to make sure we don’t take success for granted,” said Quam. “Not everybody gets this opportunity but it is common at Prairie Central.”
Only one percent of teams compete at nationals and the Prairie Central FFA had four this year.
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