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Fact Box

Abi Shaw is a student at Minot High School and the reporter for the FFA chapter.

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The 82nd Annual FFA National Convention was held last week in Indianapolis, Ind. Forty-six thousand members from around the country attended this event.

The Minot FFA took 12 members, four of whom were on the North Dakota State champion crops judging team, and competed in Agronomy at the national level. The members of this team were Kelsey Shaw, Abigail Shaw, Leah VanTilborg and Brita Martin.

This outstanding team worked hard every night for the past three months, memorizing plants and their seeds, insects and their mouth parts, economic impact and life cycle, learning to make field management plans for various crops, and grading grain. The superintendent for this contest is Harold Brown, and the official sponsor for Agronomy is Bayer Crop Science. On Wednesday, the team did their team activity, which consisted of making a field management and preparation plan for a crop and solving a problem.

On Thursday, the rest of the contest continued and contestants identified crops, weeds and seeds, graded two classes, one of hay, the other of tomatoes, identified insects, read a soil map and answered questions on it, and took a 50-question written exam.

The team overall took silver in the nation, and each member received a silver. Leah VanTilborg took 54th, Kelsey Shaw took 55th, Abigail Shaw took 58th, and Brita Martin took 63rd. High Team for the 2009 National Agronomy contest is from Washington County, Kansas, and the high individual for this event is Trevor Baker from Washington County, Kansas. Minot team members were very pleased with how they did and happy to have had the experience.

In attendance

The other eight members that attended national convention were Dylan Nerem, Joe Berg, Jordan Kauffman, Jordan Zietz, Jordan Peterson, Brooke Dahl, Shonda Gasmann and Chelsie Girard. These members spent the convention going to leadership workshops, exploring Indianapolis, and going to the Career Show. The Career Show is just as the name says: businesses and companies that support the National FFA Organization, such as Dodge and Tractor Supply Company, set up booths in the Indianapolis Convention center and interact with the members. After talking to these eight members, not one of them reported an experience that was anything short of amazing.

The theme for the 2009 National Convention is Lead Out Loud. Leading out loud means much more than just speaking up when you need to. Leading out loud means not only saying that you will do something, but really following through with your promises. The FFA Creed's first line reads "I believe in the future of Agriculture, with a faith born not of words, but of deeds." Understanding that an action speak louder than a word is learning to Lead Out Loud.

The keynote speaker this year was Mike Rowe from Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs. At the opening session, Mike Rowe spoke to the members who attended the National Convention about the big revolution to "go green" in our society. Rowe had this to say about the color itself: "It's a bad color. Green is the color of money, greed. Green is the color of jealousy."

He stated that a better color for the movement would be brown because anything that is green comes from brown. He told the people at Discovery Channel "If we want to 'go green,' we need to get 'down with brown!'" After hearing him speak, I understood that the people of America need to learn to Lead Out Loud and start actually fixing things in their communities for the new so-called "Down with Brown" revolution.

In conclusion, the Minot FFA members who attended this convention deemed it a complete success, despite delayed flights and other road bumps. I strongly encourage any FFA member interested in attending the 2010 National FFA Convention speak to their adviser or one of the members mentioned previously and experience this life-changing event.