LEXINGTON, Ky. – It’s a competition all its own. This team event is not held in an arena, nor on a court or a gymnasium. This competitive event might take place in a corn field, soybean field or even a tobacco field.

It’s the 2024 Crop Scouting Competition and students from seven states will test their knowledge on weeds, insects, crops, diseases and much more. Students will compete against others in their state before possibly advancing to regional competition. States competing are Kentucky, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana.

The University of Kentucky will hold its 2024 Crop Scouting Competition on July 25 at the UK Research and Education Center at Princeton, which is part of the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

“This competition provides students with a unique, real world, hands-on learning experience focused on pest management and gives them an opportunity to answer real-world questions about agricultural production,” said Kiersten Wise, UK extension professor and plant pathology extension specialist. “It’s just a way we can give some students a chance to learn about some of the agronomics and pest management disciplines and putting it all together, so they see what farmers and crop scouts do on a daily basis.”

Kentucky began competing in the event in 2018.

“That first year we had eight high school crop scouting teams and we sent our top two teams to Iowa that year,” Wise said.

In Kentucky, participants (four-six members per team) rotate among 10 stations where agricultural experts, or station leaders, will test their knowledge on a variety of plant- and insect-related topics.

“We allow time for the station leaders to work with the students as a group and help them learn about some things they might not know,” Wise said. “They do these exercises and get immediate feedback on how they did, and what they should be thinking about.”

According to Wise, the students will get to see what a professional crop scout or consultant would do in their job.

“We think this is a great opportunity for UK to interact with high school students, specifically those who are interested in agriculture,” Wise said.

UK faculty, graduates and interns will serve as advisers this year.

The Crop Scouting Competition began eight years ago in Iowa and later spread to the six other states.

Maya Hayslett, crop science youth education specialist with Iowa State University Extension and program coordinator for the Iowa Youth Crops Scouting Competition, presided over the first such competition.

“That first year we had 50 youth and 14 teams competing from all over Iowa,” Hayslett said.

At these events, teams rotate between different crop plots at the field station where they are evaluated on their knowledge and skills pertaining to weed identification, insect pest identification, disease identification, crop staging, crop disorders, pesticide use and many more.

“We’ve had some teams score very high, but we’ve never had a perfect score,” Hayslett added. “Winning is fun, but learning is essential.

“The competition has the potential to foster a lifetime of understanding about the concepts and importance of integrated pest Management and thus improve quality of life by increasing economic returns and reducing the unintended environmental impacts of agriculture,” Hayslett said. “Equipping future farmers and agronomists with crop scouting skills will help the next generation of farm decision makers with crop production and land stewardship.”

After each state conducts its own competition, the top two teams from each state advance to the regional competition to compete against team winners from the other six states. This year’s regional will be held in September in Minnesota. 

In Illinois, the one-day event will be July 30 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign South Farm fields. Cash prizes will be awarded to the four top scoring teams: First ($500), second ($300), third ($200) and fourth ($100).

In 2021, Kentucky captured its first regional title when the LaRue County FFA team finished first. That team was coached by LaRue County FFA adviser and high school agriculture teacher Misty Bivens.

“This contest has really sparked interest in agronomy and crop sciences with my students,” Bivens said. “The relationship that our agriculture program has with our agriculture extension agent, Daniel Carpenter, has been the key to opening up this opportunity for these students.”

LaRue has won the Kentucky tournament twice and been runners-up once.

The dates for the 2024 Crop Scouting Competition have not yet been set for Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota and Nebraska.