$1,000 grants awarded to South Dakota FFA members

Abbie Chase of the McCook Central FFA and Rylee Schultz of the Bridgewater Emery FFA each received $1,000 grants from the National FFA Organization to help create or expand their supervised agricultural experience projects. Farm Credit and Rabo AgriFinance, respectively, sponsored their grants.

An SAE, which all FFA members have, requires FFA members to create and operate an agriculture-related business, work at an agriculture-related business or conduct an agricultural research experience. Upon completion, FFA members must submit a comprehensive report regarding their career development experience.

This year, 23 different sponsors made 29 different types of SAE grants available through the National FFA Organization. Chase and Schultz were selected from 5,968 applications nationwide.

The National FFA Organization is a school-based national youth leadership development organization of more than 760,000 student members as part of 8,700 local FFA chapters in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.