Bridal Schmidt, an Ag department presenter, said the high school's LandLab benefited from local partnerships including Minnesota West, Titan Machinery, Wiffles Hybrid Seed, Pioneer Seed and Compeer Financial and brought 260 unduplicated middle- and high-school students to the site during the 2024 year.

Student Autumn Lunenburg described classroom and field activities, including guest presentations on crop insurance (Ben Kron, Frontier Financial), fertilizer recommendations from Minnesota West faculty and hands-on groups that selected seed varieties for blocks of corn and soybeans. Lunenburg said students compared planter types, examined roots, took yield estimates and rode in a combine on harvest day.

Schmidt and the presentation materials showed planting acreage and yields: 32 acres of corn at an average yield of 148 bushels per acre and 38 acres of soybeans at 38 bushels per acre. The program recorded donated inputs: Wiffles donated nine bags of seed corn and Pioneer donated all seed soybeans and treatments; the program purchased six additional bags of seed corn. The presenters said the team filed a crop insurance claim for spring planting losses due to wet conditions.

On finances, the LandLab's 2024 net return was reported as $7,507 for corn and $10,894 for soybeans; presenters said they had not yet calculated a pro forma that would list full replacement costs if the district had supplied all inputs. The presenters described plans to increase class alignment, expand horticulture and gardening work and bring more classes to the site in spring 2025.

Board members asked about whether the 260-student figure was unduplicated; presenters replied it was largely unduplicated aside from a handful of middle-school students who attended more than once. Questions about the accuracy of yield estimates prompted presenters to say the soybean harvest-day estimate was more a learning exercise than a fully rigorous sampling of the field.

Presenters closed by saying the project provided cross-grade learning (middle school through college partner classes) and practical exposure to farm machinery and agronomy, and they asked the board for continued support as they refine curriculum alignment to the field lab.