Less than a decade has passed since North Platte High School charted its FFA Chapter, and it will soon welcome its second state degree recipient.
Senior and chapter vice president Zara Prieto found out she would receive her FFA State Degree in early March.
To earn a state degree isn’t an easy task, advisers Kathleen Craig and Collin Swedberg said.
To be able to qualify for a state degree, a member must meet a large number of requirements. First off, the candidate must have been an active FFA member for at least the immediate past 24 months and have received their Greenhand and Chapter FFA degrees–in short, the awards available to freshmen and sophomores, respectively.
Applicants must also have completed at least two full years of agricultural classes. A number of other requirements are needed to be met for candidates, including them having an active Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE), with which they need to prove extensive and accurate paperwork for.
For Preito’s SAE, she has worked at Double Dips Ice Creamery for a little over a year.
“This is my last year in FFA,” Prieto said, “and I want to really accomplish something and do something.”
She did just that, and will attend the Nebraska State FFA Convention in Lincoln in April–while also competing in livestock judging–and receive her state degree on stage along with hundreds of other FFA members.
Despite all the hard work involved in applying for her state degree, Prieto believes that it was worth it.
“There’s a lot of paperwork that goes into it,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s also a very good life lesson for young people.”
Her favorite part was seeing all her hard work pay off.
“I think probably my favorite part was being able to track everything that I’ve done in this job,” she said. “Everything I’ve accomplished and I guess how much money I’ve made have been able to be put into other activities and stuff.”
The only other NPHS FFA member to have received their FFA State Degree is 2022 graduate Elleigh Fisher, who has applied for her American Degree, Craig said.
The American Degree is the highest honor an FFA member can achieve.
According to the National FFA website, “As the highest degree achievable in the National FFA Organization, the American FFA Degree … demonstrates the effort FFA members apply toward their supervised agricultural experience and the outstanding leadership abilities and community involvement they exhibited through their FFA career.”
Unlike many smaller schools, the NPHS chapter is rather new. Craig chartered the chapter in the fall of 2018 after push from her cousin, who was also an agriculture educator and FFA advisor.
“You can’t teach ag and not be an FFA adviser,” Craig said. “It’s a dual combination.”
When Swedberg joined in 2021, he brought in his knowledge of being an FFA member as well as a state FFA officer, whereas Craig is an NPHS alum and wasn’t a member in high school.
“By the time he came, I’d kind of figured it out,” she said. “But (he’s) a good wealth of knowledge to have.”
Both advisors are proud of the degree Prieto has achieved. It takes dedication and sacrifice, they said.
“It’s exciting to see students be able to connect those dots … and pass that torch, I guess,” Swedberg said, who also has his state degree.
For Prieto and many others, FFA is not about cows and plows. In fact, the organization changed its name from Future Farmers of America in 1988 to The National FFA Organization to incorporate more professions like business, science and technology.
“If people didn’t want to join FFA, I would have just tried to relate it back to if they’re not joining because they don’t have anything to do with corn and cows,” Prieto said. “They relate back to how much they rely on agriculture in their daily life.”