Sam Denherder

The future of agriculture correlates very closely to the future of the world. Agriculture is what feeds the world, and the world needs to be fed to continue to run. I believe in the future, Agriculture will continue to grow, evolve, and expand. We started to notice our farmlands were degrading, and quickly came up with solutions like crop rotation, no till methods, and growing green to solve these issues. With the new sustainability and ecofriendly agriculture practices that are gaining popularity, I feel farming will become much more efficient and everlasting. I definitely know locally, these practices are very popular, and it is crucial the rest of the world has this same mindset. My major in college is Environmental Science, and Agriculture is very close to my heart. I see myself working very closely in both of these fields in the future, as I am trying to do right now. I want to help contribute to the ecofriendly practices farmers can implement while also being sufficient. Working abroad in agriculture does appeal to me, I feel like being young and in college is the best, and sometimes the only time people have to take opportunities like that. I feel opportunities like those will open up much more options and show me experiences you can't get doing anything else to better my future.

This week has been pretty all over the place as it is the last week of the internship. On Thursday, Dr. Vollmer, Dr. Joseph, and other interns I work with went to the Commodity Classic at the Queen Anne's fairgrounds. We brought a poster to show and present about Soybean weed management resistance. I especially liked all the free stuff at all the booths as well as the crab feast at the end. It was a good time! On other days of the week, at the WREC, Dr. Vollmer and the interns rated trials, harvested watermelon to collect yield data, and sprayed some of the last alleys and trials. Harvesting watermelon was fun, and it was especially fun to throw the watermelon around weighing and moving them. On Tuesday I helped Dr. Joseph input data from this year's trial to help before the internship ends.

Here we are throwing some of the watermelon harvested from Dr. Vollmers oat cover crop study. Some of the watermelon, even though looking ripe on the vine, were still too small and some were unripe. We threw all of the unmarketable ones on the compost pile.

This is at the Commodity Classic; Dr. Vollmer and his interns went there with a poster showing a Soybean weed resistance trial we have at the WREC. We were able to walk around to all the booths and learn lots about different areas related to agriculture. We got a lot of free stuff, and the crab feast at the end was amazing. 

Here we are trying and testing different flame weeders at the WREC. Dr. Vollmer has a hooded one, but we weren't getting the best results with it, so one of the interns brought his, and we were testing the difference between the two.