Four Dublin FFA students have made history and will be headed to Nationals FFA Agriscience Fair at the end of October showing off their knowledge.
David Greene, Paul Adams, Izzy Cervantes and Zoey Soria are the first students for Dublin FFA (the best anyone can remember) who have competed at a national level for these team events.
“We are so incredibly proud of our students,” FFA Sponsor Sophie Hayhurst said. For Agriscience fair, there are no school district size divisions – all schools from 1A-5A compete against each other and this includes charter schools.
The process to make it to Nationals isn’t easy.
The first step starts at State contest where students complete their projects and write a research paper to accompany it. That paper accounts for 50% of their score and they must make a Gold in order to move forward. The paper is what is initially judged and tells all about the project, everything they did, all money invested, all their time, and goes to a panel of judges.
Next they move onto the state speaking contest at state convention where they won their division.
They qualify for nationals and then national judges evaluate their research paper and determines if they are in the top 10 in the nation.
Next, the students will give a one minute ‘elevator speech’ to tell judges about their projects and then receive a multitude of questions via Zoom.
At the National FFA Competition, which will be held Oct. 31-Nov. 1 in Indianapolis, Indiana students will find out if they placed.
Each student received $1,000 for winning state and will receive an additional $1,000 if they win at Nationals.
The students have decided to save the money for college or in some cases furnishing apartments when they move out after high school.
“These scholarships are building. Just because they competed this year doesn’t mean they can’t compete again in the future. They also don’t have to go toward a degree related to FFA or Agriculture,” Hayhurst said. “They can be used for any kind of college or trade school.”
Each student worked with at least one college professor while completing their project along with FFA sponsors providing insight, but work on the individual projects is completely done by the students.
“They are piggy backing off undergraduate studies. It has been heavily noted that students who compete in the agriscience fair are more prepared for undergraduate level science course work and have been offered externships, internships just because they have such a strong basis of knowledge,” Hayhurst said. “None of these came easy.”
Paul’s project involved the weight of root ball of plants grown in black containers vs. those grown in white containers.
“It was very surprising the results because black containers germinated far quicker than the white ones,” the junior said. “But the white containers had an average root bio mass more than a gram heavier than the black containers.”
This becomes important because when examining the plants from the black containers, they presented as having more frail roots.
“On the white containers the plants leaves were a darker green which meant they had better nitrogen intake,” he said.
For David’s project he compared insect diversity in low and high elevations. As a senior, David plans on attending college to become an entomologist (a bug scientist). He is already on the state qualifying entomology team.
Hayhurst admitted the project was not something she was familiar with so the student garnered extra help from University of Kansas professor Dr. Marshall.
“Overall, they didn’t have too much of a statistical difference, but there was things that could be noted, as like the difference insects found in each one,” he said. In higher elevations, the insects found were grasshoppers, bees and butterflies, but in lower elevations there were more ground-dwelling insects.
His project was based off two other research projects – one in China and one based in the Alps.
“The project in the Alps found that butterflies and bees have migrated 300 meters higher, and the insect diversity decreased as the elevation increased,” David said.
The path changes were attributed to urbanization, climate change and global warming.
As a senior David said he didn’t participate hardly at all in his freshman and sophomore years.
“Doing FFA stuff my junior and senior year only, I have missed out on a lot, and I wish I could just go back and do everything I can with FFA,” he said. “FFA has truly changed my life for the better, and it continues to do so to this day.”
Sophomores Zoey and Izzy teamed up to do a project together to aid wildlife on the Quahadi Ranch in western Erath County.
The project involved studying King Ranch Bluestem, which is an exotic, invasive species, and its effect on Northern Bob White quail.
“It’s hard to walk on, so you have to stomp on it. Quail shuffle their feet so their population is going down because they can’t escape predators,” Izzy said.
“KingRanchisconsidered an invasive species and it would be better to have the native Little Blue Stem,” Zoey said.
As part of their project they tested a variety of soil types that would make native grasses grow better to aid the quail population. The duo found that the King Ranch Bluestem actually made the soil more alkaline.
“It’s a major reason they have gone extinct in this area. As their habitat has degraded, they just can’t survive,” Hayhurst said. Quahadi with the help of Texas Parks and Wildlife are working to bring them back.
The group’s trip to the National FFA Convention won’t just be full of hard work. They will be able to hear other projects, meet FFA students from all 50 states and even tour an apple orchard and go apple picking.