A Greene County FFA’er recently earned a prestigious award.

High School Senior Madison Grow earned the Iowa Degree, which is the highest award the Iowa FFA program offers. She says the Iowa Degree consists of doing certain Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE), which she her jobs of working at Fareway and the Greene County Medical Center were used. She points out the main requirement is to show in your service projects how it relates to agriculture, which working for a grocery store and serving food at the medical center, is having the knowledge that most foods relates back to local farmers.

Grow talks about Greene County FFA Advisor Raelyn Harris as her inspiration toward earning the Iowa Degree.

“I wasn’t really interested at first and then she (Harris) was like, ‘I think it will really help you scholarship-wise and you’re going into agriculture-based career. In the long run it’ll look good on a resume, it’ll help you get into college, get your scholarships.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, yeah you’re right.’ So I really buckled down. It was a lot of work in the long run. She (Harris) really inspired me to do it because without her I probably wouldn’t have even applied.”

Grow describes what getting this kind of distinction means to her.  

“It means I made it. I’m graduating soon and (it’s) a big accomplishment, I guess. I’ve been in FFA for four years and kind of got robbed two of them due to COVID. So I mean, even with a little bit of FFA, I can still do big things like get an Iowa Degree, and I can still work hard, and get those SAE projects done, and compete in different activities, and stuff. So I think that that’s really helped me.”     

After graduation, Grow plans to attend Iowa State University to major in biology and eventually go into the pre-veterinary program, as she is also job shadowing with Companion Veterinary Clinic of Greene County. According to the Iowa FFA Association, less than five-percent of Iowa FFA’ers earn the Iowa Degree.