For Colin Wegner, family is the big motivator behind his career in agriculture. In high school, his FFA advisor told him to take advantage of the opportunity to be involved on the family farm. And so the native of Wells, Minn., did.
Colin’s placement supervised agricultural experience (SAE) throughout high school and college involved working on his family’s farm, Wegner Farms. The operation involves corn, soy and hay production and seed sales. He started in ninth grade, completing smaller tasks on the farm before moving up to operating equipment as he learned to drive.
Now as a graduate of South Dakota State University, he works full-time with Wegner Farms and is active in making decisions for the business.
“I’m the fifth generation to work on my family’s farm, and I’ve learned so many great tools and skills and life lessons and built character through working with my family members and seeing how they do things and learning from them,” Colin said. “I really just cultivated a passion for agriculture.”
Colin’s FFA and college experiences helped him “see the big picture in agriculture as a whole.” Through FFA, Colin participated in the agribusiness and soil judging CDEs and learned record keeping skills. In college, a summer internship with a private agronomist taught Colin crop scouting.
“I always knew I wanted to be involved in agriculture, and then being able to see all the different opportunities to me really kind of let me know the path—OK, I have a good opportunity to come back to my family’s farm,” he said. “I realized that all these people are in FFA, and not all of them come from farming backgrounds, but they all have a passion for agriculture.”
Looking forward, Colin said a goal for his family’s operation is to average 300 bushels of corn per acre within 10 years.
