Southwest Valley (Corning) Wins 2019 State Envirothon Competition
GRANGER, IA, April 18, 2019 — A group of five Southwest Valley (Corning) high school FFA students won the 24th Iowa Envirothon competition held Aug. 8 at the Jester Park Nature Center. Southwest Valley won the Aquatics portion and placed in the top three in each of the other five events to take the overall title.
Marshalltown High School took second place overall and Louisa-Muscatine FFA Gold finished third in the 15-team competition.
Southwest Valley will now compete at the national competition at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC, July 28-Aug. 2, 2019.
The Envirothon, held at Jester Park’s new Nature Center for the first time, tested students’ knowledge in the areas of Aquatics, Forestry, Soils, Wildlife, and Current Events at stations located throughout the park. Each team was also judged on an Oral Presentation. This year’s scenario asked students to develop a plan for improving a farm operation’s productivity and sustainability for future generations. Marshalltown graded highest in the oral presentation.
Other individual category winners included: Decorah Fungus Amongus (Forestry), St. Ansgar Wapsi (Soils), St. Ansgar Silt (Wildlife), and LaPorte-Dysart (Current Events).
The Envirothon is North America’s largest high school environmental competition. Iowa’s 15 State participating teams qualified after taking part in regional competitions throughout March in Waterloo, Cherokee, Red Oak, Iowa City and West Des Moines.
The Iowa Envirothon is a program of the Conservation Districts of Iowa in cooperation with the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Smithfield Foods, and USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
More information about the Envirothon is available at cdiowa.org.
