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Digging Deep
Area FFA students take
part in soil-judging contest
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| H&N photos by Andrew Mariman Students from the Basin and the Rogue Valley participate in the FFA district soil-judging contest on the Lost River Ranch on North Poe Valley Road Tuesday. Students sampled soil from several locations, evaluating various traits to make practical decisions about prospective land use. |
Lost River High School students
Miles Gatliff and Nadie Hill studied a pit of clay- and
sand-filled soil.
“It’s been farmed a lot. It has a lot of fertilizer in it,” Hill said. “You can smell it.”
They were among area Future Farmers of America high school students who converged on Lost River Ranch Tuesday for a district soil-judging contest, in which students attempted to identify the properties of soil.
“We’re trying to teach these guys to be stewards of the land,” said Bonanza FFA adviser Tom Hall. “Soil takes tens of thousands of years to develop, and one winter to blow away.”
Put to the test
Students trained to identify the color, texture, structure, fragments and other details of soil. From those details, they make determinations about how much water it will hold, how and if it will erode, and what sorts of plants can grow in it.
Soil scientist Chris Gebauer judged three pits and compared his results with student scores.
“It’s a pretty intensive process,” Gebauer said. “They have to know a lot about the soil.”
Kristen Kostman, FFA adviser for Crater High School, said the contest is challenging because students need to know a lot of different types of soil.
“I think the hardest part is, it changes wherever you go,” she said. “I think this is a very applicable contest, though.”
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| Leanne DeJong, a senior at Bonanza High School, competes in the FFA district soil judging contest Tuesday with students from the Klamath Basin and the Rogue Valley. |
Vital to agriculture
Joe Hess, executive director of the Farm Service Agency in Jackson and Josephine counties, helped with the contest. A 1998 graduate of Bonanza High School, Hess was part of Hall’s 1996 soil judging team, Hall’s first team to win the state soil judging contest.
“Had you told me back in ’96 I was going to be a soil judge and work for the Farm Service, I never would have believed it,” Hess said. “(The students) may not realize it now, but it’s real important to agriculture.”
Leanne DeJong, a senior at Bonanza High School, will be going to the state soil judging contest next week in Culver. If her team wins, it will be eligible to go to the national competition in May in Oklahoma City.
As she rubbed the soil between her fingers, she looked for a gritty, smooth or sticky texture, which would tell her if the soil had sand, silt or clay components.
“It’s pretty sandy,” she determined. “It can hold quite a bit of water.”
Side Bar
Teams competing
Future Farmers of America students from Bonanza, Lost River, Henley, Phoenix, Crater, Hidden Valley, Rogue River, Chiloquin and Lakeview participated in Tuesday’s soils judging contest.
The winning teams in the beginning class were Bonanza, Lost River and Henley, and in the advanced class were Bonanza, Lakeview and Hidden Valley.
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