FFA students don’t slow down when summer arrives. Many spend their break completing Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) projects, putting classroom lessons into practice in real-world settings.

YourAgEdge invited local agriculture advisers to nominate two students for an SAE spotlight series. Today’s feature highlights a standout from Trigg County: Ethan Curling.

As a senior at Trigg County High School and president of the Trigg County FFA chapter, Ethan Curling has built his Supervised Agricultural Experience around learning the business side of agriculture.

Curling works through a co-op position at Trigg Supply, a lumber company in Cadiz. His responsibilities include loading lumber, stocking shelves, and keeping everything organized. For Curling, the experience provides valuable insight into how agribusiness operates beyond the classroom.

Looking ahead, Curling plans to attend Murray State University to study agribusiness. 

Highly active in FFA since his freshman year, Curling has competed in parliamentary procedure, lawn and turf speech, ag sales, and employability contests. After his first competition he realized he wanted to take FFA more seriously.

“I remember saying to myself, this is a lot more than what I thought it was, and ever since then I feel like I have taken off in my FFA journey,” Curling said.

His involvement and leadership experiences helped him achieve his freshman-year goal of becoming chapter president.

“At the end of my freshman year, I told myself I wanted to be the president of this chapter,” Curling said.

He credits the success of the chapter to the officer team he gets to serve on. Curling said he likes to help where he can by attending competition practices to give advice among other things.

A big change happened for his senior year with a new agriculture teacher, Noah Peake. Curling described Peake as an amazing agriculture teacher that cares not just about the FFA members but all of his agriculture students.   

Listen to the full interview here: