South Dakota

While the crops and soils teams were exploring Texas, four of us went to South Dakota for the Spring SASES conference. There we met students from 12 different Universities, all studying agriculture. Throughout the conference, we toured local agricultural locations, listened to speakers, and did multiple activities. The local agricultural places included a local dairy farm, Poet, Bayer, and Babybel cheese plant. All of these places taught us more about how unique each state’s agriculture is. There were several incredible speakers, but a couple of the highlighted ones would be The Millennial Farmer and the Hefty Brothers. Although all the previous activities were exciting, my favorite part was the activities we did after all the learning was done. SDSU’s club put on various competitions for us, including a dodgeball tournament, Ag Olympics, and University against University tug-a-war. Now, the first two competitions they counted us off, so we did not stay with the people we knew, but that tug-a-war was a different story. Purdue only sent four smaller girls to this conference, where every other school sent closer to 6-15 people, with some big guys. Let’s say we held on longer than I thought we would, but still were eliminated pretty quickly. Spring SASES was incredible, and I cannot wait for Fall SASES.