Education 26 October 2026

Hillsboro FFA member attends FFA Next Gen Conference

The Highland County Press - Staff Photo - Create Article
Pictured is Claire Winkle (third from left).

By Claire Winkle 
Treasurer 
Hillsboro FFA Chapter 

On Sept. 15-18, Claire Winkle attended the Next Gen Animal Systems Conference in Kansas City, Mo. 

This conference is designed to help students explore different careers within the Animal Science field. During the trip, students toured several facilities, including a Smithfield Foods swine farm, a Cargill livestock feed mill, a Cargill pet feed mill, and the new American Royal facilities. 

Students had the opportunity to speak with industry professionals in a roundtable discussion about different career paths and opportunities in the industry. From start to finish, the conference had 8 sessions with topics geared toward career success and employability skills. Out of over 250 applicants, 75 were chosen to attend the conference. 

Claire Winkle was able to gain many valuable skills to use throughout the rest of high school and in her future career. 

Add new comment

This is not for publication.
This is not for publication.
About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
Article comments are not posted immediately to the Web site. Each submission must be approved by the Web site editor, who may edit content for appropriateness. There may be a delay of 24-48 hours for any submission while the web site editor reviews and approves it. Note: All information on this form is required. Your telephone number and email address is for our use only, and will not be attached to your comment.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.