The Mizzou NAMA team received first place out of 30 teams from across the U.S. and Canada in the student marketing competition at the 2024 Agri-Marketing Conference held in Kansas City, April 9-11. The team is coached by Annette Kendall (right), professor in the Division of Applied Social Sciences, and includes (left to right) Anna Eitel (senior, agriculture), Rachel Ancell (junior, agribusiness management), Emma Steele (sophomore, agricultural education – communication and leadership), Teagan Engle (sophomore, agricultural education – communication and leadership, NAMA president), and Elsie Kigar (junior, agribusiness management).

For the competition, student teams presented a marketing plan for a new agricultural product. This year, Mizzou’s product was EyeScout, an AI-powered camera designed to detect symptoms of pinkeye in cattle with 99.4% accuracy. The system reads the muzzle and facial expressions of cattle and compares them to stock images and then uses the RFID tag to alert the producer.

“Winning NAMA 2025 has been the most incredible experience of my college career,” said Engle. “Our all-women team from northeast Missouri put our hearts into this project, and to see it all pay off on a national stage, against teams from across the U.S. and Canada is beyond anything I could have imagined. We didn’t just represent our school, we represented our hometowns, our families, and every young woman in agriculture who dreams big. I hope our win shows others that they can do it too. We set out to win, but more than anything, we wanted to be remembered.”

This is the first time since 2018 that a school has won the competition twice. Mizzou won first place in 2022, placed 4th in 2021 and 5th in 2024.

Additionally, Emma Steele was awarded the MoKan NAMA Chapter Scholarship, and Regan Ragsdale, a CAFNR agribusiness management and NAMA team alum, won the Outstanding Professional Award for her engagement with and support of the team.