Clear Creek FFA Hosts District Speech Meet

Wyatt Charlson, co-winner of prepared speech,

FFA members from the John B. Kendrick, Buffalo, and Tongue River Valley traveled to Clearmont to compete in the District FFA Speech Competition, hosted by the Clear Creek FFA on Wednesday, March 2.

Categories were extemporaneous, or an impromptu speech, which preparation time is limited, reciting the FFA Creed and a prepared speech.

The judges for the competitions were the FFA Advisors from the various schools, Monica Castaneda, Clear Creek; Clay Christensen and Kassi Bernhardt, John B. Kendrick; Josh Miller, Buffalo; and John Master, Tongue River Valley.

Master of Cermonies was Peityn Manor of the Clear Creek FFA.

FFA members spoke well in reciting the creed, and in the prepared speeches,

Subjects for prepared speeches included community gardens, and why they can be an important part of helping to feed our communities, as prices on foods rise and the supply chain is interrupted. Another topic was artificial insemination as opposed to live breeding for ranchers with cattle and sheep.

Emma Pehringer talked about the PAUSE (Protect Animals from Unnecessary Suffering and Exploitation) initiative in Colorado. Current animal abuse laws, so the sponsors of the bill maintain, exempt farmed animals. Pehringer said that the focus of this campaign is to define animal abuse for farm animals. One subsection of the bill states that cows, pigs and chickens should not be slaughtered until they have a chance to become mature. Pehringer pointed out that this would create a hardship on ranchers and farmers, extra feed and extra pasture capacity would be a drain on farmer budgets. Also, older beef is not as tender or flavorful as that from younger animals. Pehringer felt that anyone who wanted to keep farms and ranches would be well-served to come up with ways to advocate for agriculture.

Wyatt Charlson spoke on a new way for ranchers and farmers to generate income.

He added that farmers would have to work to revolutionize the entire global industry as one way to change how farmers make money. Another way is to diversity and branch out into high paying products. but the cost of equipment and storage facilities can make this cost of this can be prohibitive.

The winners and alternates for the creed contest were Kaillyn Evans of the Buffalo FFA and Lilly Hancock of John B. Kendrick, Cooper Justice of Tongue River was alternate. In the prepared speech the co-winners were Lilly Krumm and Wyatt Charlson, of Tongue River Valley and Emma Pehringer of Buffalo as the alternate. In the extemporary speech Lilly Crago of Buffalo and Kami Michelena of Clear Creek were the co-winners. The winners will continue on to regionals next week in Gillette.