North Huron FFA Chapter’s Noah Koth is this year’s national winner in the FFA Specialty Crop Production Agricultural Proficiency category.
A Huron County Farm Bureau member, Koth helps farm 1,200 specialty crop acres of sugarbeets and black turtle beans in Kinde, about 10 miles from Port Austin. Some of his current farm responsibilities include tillage, running the self-propelled sprayer, hauling water, and mixing liquid fertilizer. The farm's total acreage is 3,100 with corn, soybean, and wheat acreage included.
The Specialty Crop Production category grades members based on their best-management practices to efficiently produce and market raw crops. Categories observed are native prairie plants, sugarbeets, dry edible beans, green peanuts, gourds, tobacco, specialty corn, all grass seed production, herbs and spices, mushrooms, sugarcane, hops, sorghum cane, confectionary sunflowers, crop seed and floriculture.
FFA Agricultural Proficiency awards are based on a member’s supervised agricultural experience, which recognizes individual skills and career-based competencies that will be used in their future career.
“If you really love what you’re doing, you’ll never work a day in your life,” Koth told the National FFA on Nov. 3. “That’s the beautiful part of agriculture.”
Koth’s parents are Kelli and Donald. His FFA advisors are Joseph Ankley and Haley Talaski.
“This is the first time we had a Proficiency finalist and winner for the North Huron FFA Chapter,” Ankley told Michigan Farm News. “This is huge for our chapter and our area. As a teacher, you always want them to go after their goals; Noah always wanted to go back to the farm. We were happy to help him receive recognition for his accomplishments.”