INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — In early July, the National FFA Organization announced the 16 finalists for its 2021 top achievement awards: American Star Farmer, American Star in Agribusiness, American Stare in Agricultural Placement and American Star in Agriscience.

Matthew Rowlette of Berea, Ky., Ethan Buck of Lafayette, Ind., and Chase Krug of Marion, Iowa, are among the elite 16.

Rowlette is one of four finalists for the American Star in Agribusiness. His trek to this prestigious award began when he mowed his first lawn at the age of 8. Today, at age 20, Matthew is owner and operator of Rowlette Lawn Care.

“Though I live in the city, I literally grew up on my grandparents’ farm a few miles away,” said Rowlette. “My uncle had a 160-acre farm and his perimeter included plank fencing. I was only eight years old yet it was my job to weed-eat that fence line each week. That was hard work and it taught me to pay attention to what I was doing and do it correctly. I fell in love with lawn mowing and landscaping.”

Rowlette took a liking to mowing and when he was 14 his father co-signed on a loan to purchase a zero-turn lawn mower, one that Matthew paid off in just six months.

Matthew and his two employees tend to 85 properties, ranging in size from three to five acres. And when it’s too wet to mow he performs landscaping duties, which included building retaining walls and building privacy fencing. In the winter months he and his two assistants perform snow removal duties.

“FFA taught me a lot and I was in that four years during high school,” Rowlette said. “FFA definitely opened my eyes and some doors for me. I attended Eastern Kentucky University for a year but it just wasn’t for me. My father’s health was a concern at the time. My lawn mowing business was booming, so that’s when I dropped out of school and went to work fulltime.”

His supervised agriculture experience (SAE) was set in motion. Rowlette had to keep records of business proceedings throughout the year, showing all his sales, inventory, payroll and expenses.

“I was able to show that a steady business had been created,” he said, “and that was one of the requirements.”

Oh, and in his extra time he tends to his great-grandfather’s 50-acre farm, where he raises hay and has started up a small cattle operation.

Buck is one of four finalists for the American Star in Agriculture Placement. He won this same award in 2020.

The American Star in Agricultural Placement is awarded to the FFA member with the top agricultural placement supervised agricultural experience (SAE) in the nation. The member must demonstrate outstanding achievement, active FFA participation and an exemplary scholastic record.

Buck spent 10 years in 4H but transferred to Rossville High School from another high school in the county just to be able to participate in FFA.

“That transfer was probably the best decision I’ve made in my life,” Buck said. “I started out as a wide-eyed freshman who never thought he’d get this far in FFA, but I seized the opportunity before me and worked with my adviser. That’s how I got here.”

Buck will be a sophomore at Purdue University this fall. There he is majoring in Agribusiness. But his ultimate sights are set on a return to the farm.

“My ultimate plan is to become the fourth generation to take over this farm,” Buck said. “Ag has always been in my blood and it’s what I’ve grown up around. Around here I’m the catch-all guy because I grew up around it and lived around it. I have a lot of responsibilities on this farm.”

Over the course of his SAE, Buck spearheaded a wean-to-finish pig operation on his family’s 1,000-acre farm. Buck’s SAE involved documenting what he was doing with the pigs each day, listing facts, proving those facts and keeping a detailed record of his tasks on the farm. He had the job of maintaining the nursery and finisher facilities and doing daily animal inspections.

 “We’ve contracted with an independent sow arm from Peoria, Ill., to take the pigs when they’re just 3-4 weeks old,” Buck said. “From this point, our farm will feed them for six to seven months before they are taken to market.”

His family owns and operates B & J Buck Farms. It is a combination of a wean-to-finish confined swine feeding operation which produces 4,500 market hogs a year, along with a 1,000-acre grain farming operation. Buck’s duties also include tending to the family’s corn, soybean and wheat.

 “I knew that whatever I would be doing it would involve agriculture,” Buck said. “I’m part of a new era of agriculture. They’re looking for a new generation of problem solvers and I want to be a part of that generation. No one said agriculture would be easy and I want to do my part in feeding the world.”

Krug is one of four finalists for the American Star in Agriscience.

The Star in Agriscience Award program looks at all Agriscience SAE projects an FFA members has conducted during his or her FFA career. Krug has completed 15 agriscience SAE projects over his FFA career.

During his first year in FFA, Krug bred different varieties of potatoes to see which grew the best in Iowa, and tried to find a variety of potato that could resist and tolerate the Colorado potato beetle and late blight.

In 2018, Chase applied for the Borlaug-Ruan Internship program where he was stationed at the World Vegetable Center-South Asia Office in Hyderabad, India.

“There I worked in the entomology lab on a project finding the mechanisms of resistance in mungbean seeds that prevent or deter egg laying and feeding from Bruchid beetles and larvae,” he said.

In 2019, he was bestowed with the John Chrystal Award, which honors the intern who shows commitment to enriching Iowa’s relationship with the world the belief that all are entitled to a sense of dignity and adequate food. This same year he was winner of his state’s FFA Plant System Research Proficiency Award.

“Since my freshman year in high school I’ve been into plant genetics and breeding,” says Krug, a senior at Iowa State University who is majoring in Agronomy and Philosophy. “I don’t come from an agricultural background, and have always lived in a suburban town. I got my first taste of agriculture while taking an Introduction to Agriculture class my freshman year in high school.”

Krug served as a Plants Collection intern at Reiman Gardens on the campus of Iowa State University this past year. There he managed the garden’s vast collection of diverse plants and provided the public with educational outreach. His project involved creating a backup germplasm collection to ensure it is well preserved for future rose breeders.

Chase also keeps busy by managing his own gardening projects, such as breeding tree peonies in his backyard. He also grew over 60 cultivars of rare open-pollinated beans at the local community garden in Ames.

“I’ve been an ag teacher for nearly 40 years now and I’ve never had a student with such passion for plants as Chase,” said Barbara Lemmer, Linn-Mar High School ag adviser. “His parents had nothing to do with plants and in fact, they didn’t even have a garden. Chase just found his niche and his passion for plants.”

 Upon graduating from ISU, Chase will study plant breeding in grad school.

 “FFA is mostly geared to students with an ag background, but I’m kind of a role model for those with a total urban background, showing others you can still do research and have an interest in agriculture,” Chase said.

A panel of judges will interview the 16 finalists and select one winner from each award category for the 94th National FFA Convention to be held in Indianapolis this fall.