Lee, Whiteside county FFA members get the dirt on land use

DIXON, Ill. — Eighty students from local FFA chapters were able to get their hands dirty and learn about land use at the Section 2 FFA Land Use Contest in northwestern Illinois.

The contest was conducted Oct. 9 in a recently harvested soybean field in rural Dixon and hosted by the Dixon High School FFA.

“This year it was our turn to host,” Grace Klein, Dixon High School agriculture teacher and FFA adviser, said.

Students from Amboy, Ashton-Franklin Center, Chadwick-Milledgeville, Dixon, Erie, Prophetstown-Lyndon-Tampico and Rochelle participated in the Section 2 Land Use Contest.

The field along Bloody Gulch Road wasn’t the original location. But moving the location to that field had unexpected benefits for students.

“This was not our original site. We had to change the date because of rain, so we ended up out here. What is really cool about this site is that, usually, you don’t see this much variation,” Klein said.

“We have a very loamy, typical northern Illinois prime farm ground to a pit that is only 3 feet deep because we hit bedrock.”

In the land-use contest, students judge soil in several separate pits for separate uses.

“Students are going to evaluate for two things,” said Richard Houzenga, agriculture teacher and FFA adviser at Erie High School.

“You have ag purposes. We are going to evaluate what kind of agriculture practices can be implemented on the land, from pasture to growing crops and they assess for things like nutrient recommendations for nutrient application.

“Can this land be plowed or should we use no-till? What types of fertilizer applications should we use? Do we need to do erosion control, grass waterways?”

Students also judge pits for home building.

“They are going to evaluate those for homesite practices. If it’s a sandy soil or a very clay soil, that might have to have a certain type of foundation,” Houzenga said.

“The scorecard they have helps us assess things like that: what foundation types are allowed, septic tank calculations, and what absorption fields for septic are possible. They are assessing things like that on the homesite pits and the possibilities for building a house at that location.”

Students judged four soil pits.

“When they get to the soil pit, the sign will tell them whether they are assessing for a homesite or an ag practice. The students fill out a scorecard for the soil at that pit,” Houzenga said.

Soil judging, which is part of the land use contest, is a topic that students may cover in their high school ag classes.

“This is something that they go over in class and then they practice outside at their school, for example, identifying the different horizons or soil layers, like topsoil and subsoil, and using the ribbon test to determine soil type,” Klein said.

Students evaluate everything from color and texture of the soils in a pit to slope.

“They are looking at texture. They do a ribbon texture test to find out if the soil is sandy, silt, or clay,” Houzenga said.

“From there, they look at colors. Colors tell us about drainage. That goes to the homesite usage or if we need to install tile for drainage.”

Houzenga, who attended West Carroll High School and is a West Carroll FFA alumnus, participated in land use contests when he was an FFA member.

“I liked being able to be out of the classroom and doing things with your hands and the hands-on aspect of it,” he said.

“You can touch and feel and see what you are learning. You can go from pit to pit and see the differences and use your hands to assess something.”

Houzenga said the variation in the soil pits at Dixon was providing interesting challenges for the students.

“There are two pits here that have a limiting layer, which can cause root restriction in crops. That is not that common in an ag field like this so we have a pretty unique contest set up today in this location and it should be a very interesting contest for these students today,” he said.

Members of the Dixon FFA Alumni and the local community provided support for the contest. Access to the field was provided by Book Farms and Aaron Book.

Book Farms employees dug the soil pits. Wolf Farms provided a trailer that was used as an office. Sauk Valley Bank provided doughnuts for the students and also provided lunch and volunteers.

Two employees from West Central FS in Wataga — Brandon Hall and Chase Howell — judged and scored the pits to provide a baseline for the students’ judging. Ashton-Franklin Center placed first, and Amboy FFA placed second.