Youth crop scouting teams from Colfax and Cuming counties received top honors at the state contest this week and will advance to the regional competition in Indiana August 28.

Five teams competed in the fourth annual Crop Scouting Competition for Nebraska youth at the Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center near Mead on August 2. Teams of students (those completing 7-12^th grades) completed a written knowledge test and eight crop scouting exercises in field plots.

Winners of the 2017 competition were:

• First place — Colfax County 4-H (Logan Nelson, Joey and Brad Kratochvil, and Korbin Kudera)
• Second place — Kornhusker Kids 4-H Club of Cuming County (Payton and Levi Schiller, Matthew Rolf and Kaleb Hasenkamp)
• Third place — Humphrey FFA Team #2 (Mikayla Martensen, Bryce Classen and Wyatt Wegener)

Also participating were

• Humphrey FFA Team #1 with Dustin Ternus, Ashton Dohmen, Jacob Brandl and Austen Schmidt.
• Norris FFA with Carter Burenheide, Daniel Oldemeyer, Carter Rohrer and Layton Moore.

Top-scoring teams won prizes: $500 for first, $250 for second, $100 for third place.

The purpose of the competition is to provide students an opportunity to learn crop scouting and principles of integrated pest management (IPM) for corn and soybeans in Nebraska, to obtain knowledge and skills that will be helpful in future careers, and to demonstrate newer crop scouting technologies.

Teams were expected to know the basics of scouting corn and soybean fields, including crop staging; looking for patterns of crop injury; and disease, insect and weed seedling identification.  

More information about the crop scouting competition is available at cropwatch.unl.edu/youth under the link, Crop Scouting Competition. Next year’s competition will be held July 26 at the University of Nebraska Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center again.

This program was sponsored by the Nebraska Independent Crop Consultant Association and DuPont Pioneer in collaboration with Nebraska Extension.