Last weekend Northeast community college played host to the North America Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture or NACTA judging conference.

It is an event that promotes education and competition between students and features a number of events.

One of the organizers of the event and instructor at Northeast Community College, Mike Roeber, outlined some of what the students participated in.

“We are putting on 13 different contests this week for these students that have come in from all over the United States and even Australia to join us this week,” Roeber said.

Just some of the events the students competed in included, dairy judging, a quiz bowl, an Ag knowledge bowl and livestock judging which is usually the most popular, but was surpassed this year.

“As far as registration numbers, the crops contest was our largest registration area,” said Roeber. “Usually livestock judging is. We have about 120 kids here that were judging livestock and about 145 signed up to do the crops contest.”

It is a contest that truly put the students knowledge of a myriad of plants to the test.

“They will have to identify between 50 and 75 plants,” Roeber said. “From plants that might be about two inches tall to full mature plants.”

 

While this years competition has come to a close, there is always next year. And the next host is looking at Northeast as the model for how to run the event.

“We're going to Murray State (in Kentucky), next year,” said Roeber. “And one of their faculty members stopped in my office and said, 'we're just going to do it like Northeast did it and we're going to be fine.' We love to hear that.”