Four members of the East Knox FFA competed April 22 in the State Environmental/Natural Resources Career Development Event hosted at the New Lexington FFA Farm in Perry County, where they placed second out of a field of teams from across Ohio. Team members were Alexandria Magers, Andrew Poff, Hailey Frazee and Dustin Springer. The teams that participated were selected by invitation, coming from the top five places in the earlier-conducted state career development events in the areas of forestry, agricultural soils, urban soils, nature interpretation and wildlife management. Each school that qualified in these five areas could only have one team from their school.
East Knox qualified in forestry, where they placed second (and will compete in the Eastern States Exposition in Massachusetts in September), and in agricultural soils, where they were the fourth-place team in the state last October (and will compete in the National Soils Contest in May in Oklahoma).
The contest consists of three phases. In the first phase, the students took an exam on the environment and natural resources. Phase 2 was giving a group presentation, and the final phase consisted of conducting fieldwork.
In the presentation, the students presented a PowerPoint over the theme of “H2Ohio” which deals with improving water quality in the state. They filmed an eight-minute presentation and uploaded it to a group of judges at Central State University.
In the fieldwork portion, participants completed a water analysis consisting of dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature tests; identified macroinvertebrates; performed a soil analysis where they used a builders level to determine elevation and slope; determined soil type, runoff curve and area of a watershed; calculated soil textures; located points using GPS units; and performed an environmental analysis on a site.
The scores from the three phases of the event were added together to get the final state rankings.
The Environmental/Natural Resources Career Development Event is an educational activity designed to assess a student’s knowledge of environmental management and to provide recognition for those who have demonstrated skills and competencies in the area of natural resources.
East Knox FFA has placed in the top five in the state in the Environmental/Natural Resources CDE every year except one since the contest first started in 2007, when they won the initial event. They have finished in second place for four out of the past six years and won the event again in 2021. East Knox will now represent Ohio in the Eastern States Exposition in Massachusetts next September.
