CAREER AG SEMINAR 2025
The annual Career Ag Seminar was held on Friday, April 11, 2025 at Santa Fe High School. We welcomed 5 Ag professionals who shared their background and what led them to their current careers with about 80 students from grades 8-12.
Blake Barlow - Mo Soybean Researcher
Brad Butner - Mo Weld Institute
Emily McVey - Animal Health Corridor
Erin Meyers - C & M Greenhouse
Kennedy Dankenbring - Ag-Power Marketing
Career Ag Seminar 2024
Annual Career Ag Seminar
March 26, 2024
The Santa Fe AgriLeaders, along with Santa Fe R-X High School, hosted the Career Ag Seminar for 8th-12th grade Ag students. We welcomed six different Ag Professionals to share their knowledge and experiences with students. The goal of this event is to educate youth to consider the vast opportunities within the Ag Industry. Sponsors included Ag-Power & MoSoy.
Director of Ag, Chris Chinn
Agri-Spray Drones, Jordan Sayre
Ag-Power/John Deere Tech, Jeff Haynes
Missouri Cattleman's, Marsha Corbin
Teach Ag Embassador, Lindsey Ball
MoSoy Board member, Nathan White
Scholarship recipients
Career Ag Day 2023
On Monday, March 28 the Santa Fe AgriLeaders hosted Career Ag Day at Santa Fe High School. Around 100 students heard about the wide range of Careers related to Agriculture.
This is the second Career event the group has hosted, the first was held in January 2020. All FFA members, plus an Exploring Agriculture class of 8th graders attended the event.
Brittany Hemme, Advisor for the Santa Fe AgriLeaders, moderated the panel which included:
Gerry Stauch - Ag-Power
Larry Smith - KMMO Radio
Kelly Erdman - FCS Financial
Taylor Vollin - MO Farmers Care
The panel introduced themselves and gave the students a brief understanding of their educational backgrounds, what a typical day looks like, how they came to be in their career, who their mentors were and what they love most about their job. Two breakout sessions followed the panel discussion. The breakout sessions lasted 20 minutes each and gave students the opportunity to spend more time with their choice of two of the four Careers/Presenters. These sessions allowed the students to ask more specific questions and gave the presenters a chance to offer advice to the students by sharing more specific details about their career, education, and experiences.
Gerry shared from his perspective as manager and how John Deere has multiple facets of opportunities within their industry.
Larry spoke about his wide range of experiences before getting into radio and becoming the Ag Director for KMMO radio.
Kelly highlighted how her past jobs lead her to where she is now and how she found her perfect fit in insurance.
Taylor expressed her daily life lessons on how versatile Communications can be, especially when working remotely and balancing home with work life.
The Santa Fe AgriLeaders are proud to be able to offer this event to students in hopes it will inspire them to pursue a future Career in Agriculture.
We wish to thank Santa Fe High School and the staff for allowing us to use the facilities, to Jenny Hobbs for her help in coordinating the event, and to our sponsors, FCS Financial and MO Soybean Association.
