Karlene Krueger never backed down from a challenge.
The Marshfield FFA alumna grew up on a hog farm in Wisconsin, where she developed a passion for showing and raising swine. Krueger’s agricultural education teacher and FFA advisor Mark Zee remembers her as hardworking and goal-oriented when she was in FFA.
“She was very driven, and she had the ability to set goals and reach them,” Zee recalls.
Krueger’s supervised agricultural experience (SAE) was in swine production and breeding. She used artificial insemination to breed her pigs. In addition to a passion for breeding and showing swine, Krueger was skilled in sharing what she learned with precision and accuracy. She embraced every opportunity to talk about her projects in FFA competitions.
Zee believes those skills made Krueger stand out when she competed for her American FFA Degree at the 75th FFA National Convention in Louisville, Ky., in 2002.
“Karlene was very articulate and knew her SAE inside and out,” he recalls. “The Star awards were a way that she could reflect upon her accomplishments.”
That year, Krueger was named American Star Farmer and was the first female to earn the award. She told Wisconsin State Farmer magazine in 2017 that she wasn’t expecting to win, adding, “I really didn’t think I stood a chance because I was competing against kids who came from some big [livestock] operations.”
The accomplishment was significant. The National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., asked to display her iconic blue and gold FFA jacket. She delivered it to the museum in 2014 where it hangs along with jackets that belonged to other iconic FFA members, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Corey Flournoy, the first Black national FFA president.
“We were proud of Karlene to achieve this level of recognition,” says Cheryl Zimmerman, National FFA executive secretary. “To be named the first female American Star Farmer was groundbreaking, and it also allowed other women to achieve this level of recognition in FFA.”
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Krueger started farming with her husband, Scott, at Krueger Family Farm in Ashford, Wis. The couple raised Duroc, Hampshire and Poland China pigs.
Krueger was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in 2016. She died January 25, 2022. She’ll be remembered as an extraordinary person and the strongest supporter of all-things livestock and agricultural education.
