ALLIANCE, Ohio — Members of the Marlington FFA Chapter traveled to Columbus May 5 for the 83rd Ohio FFA Convention. Seniors Emily Conrad and Lisa Sutton received gold ratings for their respective secretary’s and treasurer’s books. Seniors John Sinkovich and Emily Conrad received their state FFA degrees during the convention.
Junior Rebecca Faverty was a top state proficiency finalist in the area of agricultural processing and placed third in the entire state. Senior Amber Shoemaker received the District 3 star state farmer award.
Freshmen Katie Farnham and Brittney Costa received a bronze rating and placed third in their category in the state agriscience fair. Freshman Ashley Royer and sophomores Ashley Foster and Haley Faverty received bronze ratings as well. Junior Jenny Warner and seniors Emily Conrad, Lisa Sutton and Steven Parker received silver ratings. Junior Justin Weisent earned a gold rating.
The Marlington agricultural education classes and FFA chapter manage about 30 acres of fields on the school property. Since 2010 the program has been working with Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc, and Chuck Parker of Parker Farms in East Canton.
The students have planted a corn and soybean across from the high school as test plots. This will allow the students to track the growth and development of several different seed varieties all in one field.
Pioneer Hi-Bred will post the results to an online system and farmers can log on to compare how a certain seed variety grew in Stark County in comparison to in their own fields.
