THE COURIER

Five Logan County FFA members will receive a state degree in Springfield at the state FFA convention in June following recent candidate interviews.

The five are Jay Hild, Vance Knauer and Michael Litterly, all of Mount Pulaski FFA, Andrew Fulton of Lincoln FFA and Brock Lesson of Hartsburg-Emden FFA. The State FFA Degree is only awarded to the top 2 percent of FFA members in the state.

To obtain the state FFA degree, a member must have received their Greenhand and Chapter degree and must have made either $1,500 or worked 750 hours with their particular Supervised Agriculture Experience.

Some FFA members also earn Section Star Awards, which are awarded to one member per section in each of the four award areas: agribusiness, where the member owns his or her own business; placement, where the member works for an agriculture based company or production sector; farmer, with the member personally owning a production-based operation – primarily corn and soybeans, cattle and hogs, and agri-science, with the member performing research in agriculture.

This year, Mount Pulaski had three Star award winners:

• Jay Hild is the Star in Placement. Jay works for his father on their family corn and soybean farm in rural Mount Pulaski, where he is involved in all operations of the enterprise as well as being involved with soil; samples, GPS and other technologically based information.

   

• Michael Litterly is the Star in Agribusiness. He owns and operates a lawn mowing service in Elkhart. Litterly is responsible for all of his operations and customer service.

   

• Vance Knauer is the Star in Agri-science. His supervised agriculture experience involves wildlife management techniques, including research in deer herd management and population treds. He is also involved in providing better habitat for wildlife in areas around Mount Pulaski as well as Brown County.

   

  The three star award winners competed this week at the district level in Jacksonville, where they were interviewed again and competed against Star award winners from four other sections. If they win the District Star, they compete at the state level at the University of Illinois in April.