BEATRICE - Southeast Community College (SCC) in Beatrice held an FFA livestock judging contest. Over 300 area high school students attended and it’s an opportunity for future farmers to grow and learn in their craft.

“Students come here and they examine four animals in a pen,” Mark Goes, instructor of live stock production for SCC, said. “These animals have been prior evaluated by our students and official placings have been placed on them as what they should be.”

Goes explained that by using concepts of animal science and their knowledge of the livestock industry, students rank animals best-to-worst. Things like muscle and market class are factored in. Avery Kraus, from Syracuse, NE., has raised cattle and hogs her whole life. She says the contest is good for those of all experience levels.

“It’s a great learning experience for those that aren’t that involved in this stuff, but it’s also great for those of us that are interested in it,” Kraus said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to do what we love and get some practice especially if we want to make it into the career field after high school.”

Goes said contests such as these are important to grooming the next generation of farmers.

“Well first off, we have a shrinking population of ag producers,” Goes said. “We need these ag producers to produce food for our world. As with all of our industry across the nation, we have a crisis with employees.”

That crisis stems from age, which is why local youth getting experience is critical.

“The ag production sector is less than 2% of our population and of that, in the livestock world, the majority of those producers are over 60 years of age. They’ll be retiring soon, so we need to find replacements for them ,” Goes said. “So the exposure of these students to these animals here helps them get an interest in animal agriculture and maybe they’ll seek out a career.”

Goes also said another important reason for the event is to get area students interested in attending SCC’s agriculture school.

“They see the type of students they’d interact with, they’ll get to meet some instructors, and they get to see that if they do decide to make a career in agriculture, this is a good place to get a start,”  Goes said.