ABOVE: Martin County West FFA students on the Farm Business Management team recently placed first at state and will be going on to Nationals later in the year. From left: Tanner Sinn, Christian Bachenberg, Jacob Fiala and Raef Omvig.

SHERBURN– The four member Farm Business Management team in Martin County West High School’s FFA program recently placed first at the state convention. The team will now go on to Nationals, which will take place in the fall in Indianapolis.

The Farm Business Management Team is made up of seniors Tanner Sinn, Jacob Fiala, Christian Bachenberg and junior Raef Omvig.

Farm Business Management is just one CDE (Career and Leadership Development Event) within FFA. Some other CDEs include Poultry Evaluation, Floriculture and Agronomy.

At the state convention, which took place at the University of Minnesota in late April, 38 other Farm Business Management teams competed but MCW’s came out on top. Sinn explained that in Farm Business Management, they take two tests.

“One’s a practicum that’s looking at financial records from a farmer and comparing them with other people’s average records throughout the state. The other test is basic knowledge about marketing, financing and everything to do about running a farm,” Sinn said.

The four members all have a long track record of participating in FFA and have been on the Farm Management Business team the last few years. They shared what drew them to it.

“You learn a lot of knowledge you have to know in the real world, like taxes and budgeting. It’s not just farm math, it’s business,” Fiala said.

Bachenberg agreed with that sentiment and said it’s not so much that he likes farm business specifically, but business in general.

“I’m pretty good at math and when Jacob found that out he kind of recruited me,” Omvig said.

Jeremy Daberkow is a former teacher at the school who had some of the students. Now, he teaches at Minnesota West but has remained a coach for FFA.

Daberkow said, “For a lot of students, this isn’t a top 10 choice of CDE events because it’s a 3.5 hour math test. I think you find a student who’s interested and they find friends that are good at math and recruit them.”

He said the students may not admit that the test itself was fun, but that the fun happens though practice and interaction.

“It’s not the state winning football team glamour, it take a different skillet, but it’s still difficult,” Daberkow said.

Every time they take the exam and practicum at other contests, they have different questions using different farm scenarios. Omvig said ahead of state they practiced a few mornings a week before school, from 7:30 to 8 a.m. At that time they worked on questions they had typically been getting wrong.

Their work clearly paid off. While the school’s FFA program has sent teams to Nationals before, this is the first time the Farm Business Management is going. Bachenberg said both of his sisters have gone to Nationals for FFA.

A misconception is that students who are in FFA live on farms. However, Sinn is the only one who lives on an actual farm.

“It just goes to show you don’t have to live on a farm to compete in a lot of these things,” Fiala said.

As for how this CDE has prepared them for what’s next in their life, Sinn, who is a senior, said he does plan to pursue some kind of business degree. Fiala said he doesn’t intend to pursue either farming or business, but he still sees the benefit of his FFA experience.

“It definitely gave me a lot of real world knowledge, especially since we live in an area of agriculture. It’s really important to me what kind of stuff goes on in that field,” Fiala said.

FFA coach Stephanie Wohlhuter said they have about 115 members in FFA and 47 of them went to the state convention. She said that’s actually a little less than what the school’s program typically brings to state, but that they’re still in “recovery mode” following a slight dropout during Covid.

In addition to the Farm Business Management team, four teams placed in the top five in the state and one student, EllieRose Nelson, placed individually in her contest.

“Overall their results are very good. For a lot of these CDE’s there’s probably somewhere between 30 and 50 teams competing,” Wohlhuter said.

Aside from the team going to Nationals, Wohlhuter said the FFA season is pretty much done until next fall, although there are leadership camps, community service projects and some other events students will partake in over the summer.

Wohlhuter shed some light on the importance of recognizing the FFA student’s success.

“Their work is often times unseen. They come in before school to practice because a lot of them are involved in other things. We recognize kids for all kinds of athletic achievements and I think it’s important to recognize academic and leadership achievements as well.”