Minnesota Ag Connection - Weninger Earns FFA Star in AgriBusiness Honors

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Weninger Earns FFA Star in AgriBusiness Honors
Minnesota Ag Connection - 05/02/2016

The Minnesota FFA Association named Madeline Weninger the 2016 Minnesota FFA Star in AgriBusiness at the 87th Minnesota FFA Convention. Weninger is a Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted FFA member.

Most eighth graders look forward to a summer hanging out with their friends, but when Maddie Weninger started her summer in eighth grade with a free schedule, she began looking for a job related to horticulture.

Weninger, who will be a senior at Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted (HLWW) next year, applied to be an unpaid volunteer for a summer garden program with the HLWW FFA chapter. She soon discovered that she loved it -- especially being able to interact with community members.

She accepted a position at Untiedt's Vegetable Farm during the same summer, where she works Saturdays and Sundays at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market selling a wide range of produce to consumers in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

"It is pretty evident to me that Weninger is quite an extraordinary and well-rounded individual," Seena Glessing, HLWW agriculture instructor, said. "She possesses many qualities not often found in young people her age."

Weninger also serves as a manager of the Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted FFA Garden CSA as a continuation of her work-based learning experiences. As the manager, Weninger engages in all aspects of vegetable and fruit production beginning with the planning of the yearly production through customer preference surveys and customer share sales.

The job does require Weninger to get her hands in the dirt from planting in the early spring in the greenhouse to the harvesting and packaging of customer share baskets in the fall.

When she isn't playing in the dirt, Weninger is working with planting schedules, work schedules, sales, communications and other duties.

Even though she has another year of high school after this year to decide on her future, Weninger is certain she wants to attend South Dakota State University to become an agriculture teacher.

Each year, 16 state finalists -- four in each category -- vie for the association's top awards: Star Farmer, Star in Agribusiness, Star in Production Placement and Star in Agriscience. These awards honor students who have developed outstanding agricultural skills through their supervised agricultural experience (SAE) and earned the state degree.

The Minnesota FFA Degree recognition programs are sponsored by AgStar Financial Services as a special project of the Minnesota FFA Foundation.

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