PCM's Diamond Trail FFA comes out on top at state

A year’s worth of work and preparation has paid off for members of PCM's Diamond Trail FFA team. The group competing at the Iowa FFA Food Science Career Development Event in June were named state champions with Blake Van Der Kamp named the High Individual Overall in the competition.

Along with Van Der Kamp, Arthur Van Wyk, Morgan DeHaai and Alexis Dross will represent Iowa at the National Food Science Career Development Event in Indianapolis in October.

“This group has been practicing since the contest ended last year,” advisor Amber Samson said. “Nearly every day they would come before school they would practice identifying scents and three of the four had first period study hall and would work then.”

Aspects of the competition they worked on included a triangle test where the looked at three samples of a product. Two of the samples were the same while one was different and it had to be identified using their senses

“The last few months the team put together their product development presentation on a non-beef burger,” Samson said.

According to the Iowa FFA Association, the event is designed to provide the student an opportunity to display their agricultural knowledge and skills in the area of food science. The 46 individuals who participated in the event completed several activities including demonstration of skills and problem solving in dealing with consumer concerns, food safety and sanitation, aroma identification, taste testing and product differences. A written examination was included along with a team product development competition.

“To have them win was absolutely amazing,” Samson said. “They are a wonderful bunch of kids. I knew they could do it, it just took some convincing to get them to believe it to. I preach that the test is what sets all the teams apart, skills can be easily picked up but the general knowledge is a lot. They listened and we had the top first, second and third place test takers in the state.”

Samson said the next step for the group is the National FFA Convention where they will compete against the other state winners for the same contest.

“The national level will take more discipline and studying as it is more rigorous and slightly different than our state, not to mention they are competing against the best in the nation in food science,” Samson said.