Oklahoma Farm Bureau’s rural economic development department has partnered with Oklahoma FFA to launch the SAE CEO Challenge to recognize the entrepreneurial spirit of students who run their own business.
The SAE CEO Challenge is an all-new, custom program for students and educators that combines a customized classroom curriculum provided to Oklahoma high school agricultural educators along with a state-level pitch contest for students.
The program is designed to help students who have an existing entrepreneurship supervised agricultural experience program build their businesses while inspiring students who do not yet operate their own business enterprise to understand the importance of entrepreneurship while developing their business skills.
The challenge begins with a classroom curriculum developed to help students understand the ins and outs of operating a business. The curriculum is designed to be taught over either a two-week timeframe or a longer, more intensive nine-week program.
Throughout the classroom component, students develop real-world business plans, learn the ins and outs of financial statements, develop a pitch deck to share their business story and prepare them to pitch their businesses as part of the contest portion of the challenge.
The state-level SAE CEO Challenge contest will provide an opportunity for students to showcase their own business enterprises by presenting their pitch on Nov. 6 during the 2026 OKFB state convention in Oklahoma City.
To participate in the contest, students must submit a business plan, pitch deck and other documents related to their recorded entrepreneurship SAE. To be eligible to compete, FFA members must have an entrepreneurship SAE with at least one year of records logged into the agricultural experience tracker platform.
The state winner will receive a cash prize that they can reinvest back into their business to help their SAE, and their business grow.
OKFB hopes the SAE CEO Challenge will help broaden students’ horizons to understand how they can be lifelong entrepreneurs while helping them build business-related skills and knowledge that they can use throughout their lives.
Agricultural educators, students or parents interested in the program can contact OKFB’s Garrett Saunders to learn how they can access the curriculum and join the contest.
