I’m a Former Champion in the Washington State Potato Judging Competition. | Part I: Five Things Most People Don’t Know About Me

In today's world, it's safest to put up a professional front and not let others know the little things about you. That’s a surefire way to take yourself too seriously. 

I grew up in the city of Ritzville, Washington, where the population is the same as the elevation – 1800. It’s an agricultural community where life centers around harvests, growing seasons, fairs, rodeos, and livestock. Some of my oldest and fondest memories are from helping my parents with the annual Ritzville Rodeo. My best friends lived out in the country, miles away from me. My first job was at a local cattle ranch. 

It's no surprise then, that my high school had an FFA Chapter. For those who don’t know, the FFA (Future Farmers of America), is a massive youth organization that encourages students to become involved in the agricultural industry by hosting contests and events centered on agriculture. That translates to a lot of competitions. If you perform well in your district, you could compete at the annual Washington State FFA convention at Washington State University. If you win your state competition, you can compete at the National FFA Convention, which – while I was in high school – was held each year in Louisville Kentucky. Once you win the state championship, you can only compete at nationals once in that category. You also can only compete in one national competition at each national convention. As lawyers love to say, you “only get one bite at the apple.” 

The FFA Creed 

My competitive debut was in the FFA Creed competition. This contest is exclusively for freshmen and involves reciting the five-paragraph-long FFA creed while being graded on a variety of factors, including accuracy. When I grow old and my memory fades, I doubt I’ll ever forget the words “I believe in the future of agriculture.”  

I made it through my district competitions handily but, in the final round of the state competition, I fumbled a word early on – agriculturist – and couldn’t quite recover. I placed and received a coveted plaque but lost the privilege of reciting the creed in front of the entire convention to a young woman from Colfax, who simply did it better.  

That experience was the spark that lit the fire. By the next year, I was an officer in my local FFA Chapter and was involved in as many competitions as possible. In that same year, my tiny high school combined with another school district 15 miles away. The birth of the Lind-Ritzville FFA Chapter provided plenty of new opportunities.  

The Marketing Competition 

As a sophomore, I joined our marketing team along with two brilliant young women who – no matter where life takes me – I will always count amongst my best friends. Our task was to create a marketing plan for an agricultural product, provide a 15-minute speech to a panel of judges as if they were the owners of the product, and then answer questions about the marketing plan. Our product was a 4-in-1 minimum tillage drill which allowed tillage, seeding, application of pesticides, and application of fertilizer with a single pass across a field.  

We won the Washington State competition and moved on to the National Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. If you ask me, we performed better than anyone in the nation. If you asked the judges, apparently, we were the third best. In any case, giving a 15-minute presentation in front of a hundred people and then being grilled with questions by grown adults is no small feat for any 16-year-old. That said, I’ll always be a little bitter when I hear about “tactical hog hunts,” the product marketed by the team from Texas that took first prize.  

Soil Judging  

As time went on, I realized I had an aptitude for competitions where there were hard and fast rules, technical answers, and no room for a judge's discretion. That is what drove me toward success in Landsite Evaluation (aka Soil Judging). In Soil Judging, each contestant is given four outdoor sites to evaluate. Based on the soil type, the slope, the height of the water table, and a variety of other factors, contestants determine what agricultural or other practices the land would be suitable for and assign it a grade. Contestants receive a score based on the accuracy of their findings. Team rankings are based on the cumulative score of each team.  

In my sophomore year, I led our Soil Judging team to a heartbreaking near victory (2nd place) in the state competition. The next year we won first place as a team. One of my teammates and I tied for first place as individuals and had to flip a coin to determine who got to take home the first-place plaque. That year, I opted to act as an alternate at the national competition so I could compete at the state competition again the next year. In my senior year, we won the state competition again. Our state championships earned us two trips to the FFA National Landsite Evaluation Competition in Oklahoma City – where there is red dirt and BBQ as far as the eye can see.  

The best part about Soil Judging was honestly just getting to be a kid and mess around. By my second year competing, my team and I had perfected the art of looking like we had no idea what we were doing. It was hilarious to see the look on the faces of the other teams when the kids that were eating dirt and kicking rocks were the ones that beat them. It might be childish, but it still brings a smile to my face.  

Meat Judging 

Meats Technology and Evaluation consists of three parts. The first is identifying different cuts of meat, including: (1) the type of animal; (2) the name of the cut; and (3) how it should be cooked. The second is grading beef carcasses based on the USDA grading system (e.g., Prime, Choice, Select) and a yield grading system (estimating the amount of the carcass that will make it to retail). The third is solving a word problem about mixing various meat products to produce ground meat.  

This competition is highly technical and more competitive than you could imagine – we once witnessed a fierce young woman from another FFA chapter slap her teammate across the face with a lambchop for failing to identify it properly. My team won the state championship – but no thanks to me. I botched my hamburger formulation (the word problem) and will never let myself live it down. Thankfully I was able to redeem myself in Louisville that Fall, where the team managed to place 5th in the nation.  

Agronomy 

The Agronomy competition primarily consists of identifying plants and seeds, but also includes drawn-out problems where you are asked to determine how to fix issues with commercial growing practices. Agronomy was the bread and butter of the Lind FFA Chapter because their advisor knew the competition well and managed to collect samples of almost every weed, seed, and plant species that could come up in competition. They were already on a state championship streak when the Lind and Ritzville chapters combined. That streak continued for several years. I participated on one of those winning teams my junior year but opted to go to the national competition for Meat Judging instead of Agronomy. We won again my senior year but – because going to the national competition would have required taking a break from my freshman year of college – I elected not to go. I can't say I regret it, but I still question that decision. 

Potato Judging 

It’s a little-known fact that Washington is the second largest potato producer in the country (behind Idaho of course). In fact, if you’ve ever eaten McDonald’s french fries, you’ve probably eaten potatoes grown and processed in Grant County Washington. Due to the local prevalence of the potato, a competition exclusive to Washington was born. 

The Washington State FFA Annual Potato Judging competition consists of three parts. In the first, you assess whether individual potatoes qualify as USDA Grade 1, 2, or cull. In the second, you’re provided with potatoes that are defective and must identify the nature of the defect (e.g., mechanical damage, cellar green, nematodes). In the third, you’re provided with four groups of seed potatoes and must rank them based on how well they will grow.  

Given that there was no national competition, I took potato judging rather lightly. I competed only once. I did very little to prepare. Yet, in my senior year potato judging debut, I somehow managed to place first in the state as an individual. If you ask me, the secret to success is to smell every single potato.  

I will forever be grateful to the FFA and my former advisors for providing me the opportunity to develop myself as a person, scholar, and leader. It forced me to engage in social interactions I wouldn’t have been comfortable with otherwise. It helped me develop public speaking, problem-solving, and memorization skills that are invaluable to me now. Becoming an officer and eventually, the president of my chapter, gave me my first chance at being a leader and taking responsibility for others. The FFA made me a better person. It also gave me the ultimate ice-breaking ‘fun fact.’  

“….. Wait …. What? How do you judge a potato?” 

By: Tyler O’Brien