The past week has finally started to slow down as farmers are nearing the end of planting are not needing as much fertilizer now. I have been running hard for about the last month mixing and sending out fertilizer just about as fast as I could get it delivered to our location. So now I have been doing a lot of maintenance on our equipment in this slow time before we get busy with farmers top dressing corn with urea in a month. I have also been helping out more with customers in the store and getting more familiar with our products and the regular customers that always come in. We have also been dealing with an infestation of chipmunks in the store that love to rip open feed bags so that’s pretty cool. Stay tuned for my updates next week.
Monthly Archives: May 2021
The past week
This past week was my third week working for Caledonia Farmers Elevator. The Elevator was the grain elevator thats in the neighboring county, but I hav been aware of this business my whole life. My internship was a joint internship with Caledonia Farmers Elevator, and Purina Animal Nutrition. My first couple weeks I have been working on getting acclimated working with the Caledonia Staff, even though I knew them before beginning this Internship. One thing I have learned about the staff this past couple of weeks, are their patience with their customers. My main activity I have been a part of my first few weeks is participating in sales meeting with members of the feed team and producers. One of the main jobs in working with a feed and grain elevator is the process of using other producers products. I have heard the techniques by salespeople to try and convince the Elevator to take the product. I think this is a valuable action to see because I have learned pieces of data and words that the people in the industry really care about. For example, when it comes to Dairy nutrition the biggest of piece of data that wants to be heard is the pounds of milk produced on a daily average. When in these sales meetings, the distributors want to hear about how their products affect that data point. I also saw the importance of research used in the Dairy Industry. These distributors like Caledonia want to see research used for these products or there will be no chance in a sale.
This past week I also attended my first Purina internship opportunity with a 4 hour long zoom with many National Purina employees and my fellow Interns. This zoom meeting I learned a-lot about the Purina Company and their goals in purposes when it comes to animal nutrition. The Purina representatives showed us videos of their home research center known as ‘The Farm” in Missouri, that we Interns will be invited to visit in August. Purina dedicates alot of money towards accurate and valuable research programs because of their belief and dedication to providing high quality products. This was the first Purina event I attended, but I get to meet with my local sales person this next week to discuss research opportunities that I cab take on for the rest of the Summer.
Rizo Lopez Food Inc. Week 1
My first week at Rizo Lopez was not exactly work directed. Since my CPT Authorization is valid since June 1st, my first week here at Rizo was like an orientation week. I went around watching the plant and what components make it up. My job will be mostly around the logistics and supply chain area so I spent a lot of time watching how the plant operates, from the point the inputs get received, to the processing department and how the final output is being produced. During my orientation week I shadowed numerous plant managers and workers and they showed me how critical it is for every person in the plant to do their job and the areas that I will be helping them in. I am very much looking forward to start working this upcoming week.
Farmer’s Keeper Week One
This past week I started my sales internship with Farmer’s Keeper which is in the Wrigley Ville area of Chicago, Illinois. The first few days of work were kept basic and informational, so I became comfortable and acclimated to my current environment. Meaning the first day was set for creating different accounts within the company such as a Gmail account and their main data source used for clients as well as potential clients which is called Hubspot. The day following my first day was spent shadowing sales representative Jack Carroll and learning his process with calling farmers and putting information into the data base. The rest of the week was spent learning about the commodity markets and expanding the basic information I have learned from past classes. While it was a lot of information to take in at once, I found it all very interesting and my boss, Nick Tsiolis, was very patient with my learning.
While Farmer’s Keeper is a fairly new company and has only just started back in January 2020, I was surprised when shown a map of all the clients and how quickly this company is expanding. Farmer’s Keeper has clients all along the grain belt from Nebraska to Mississippi that will contract their grain through our managed pricing programs we have with large commodity brokers such as FC Stone and Indigo.
At the end of the week my boss Nick, took me on what he called a “field trip” to meet with current farmers who are our clients as well as potential clients who felt more comfortable talking business in person rather than over the phone. During this field trip we also stopped at a grain elevator located in Roanoke Illinois to discuss future and past business we have done with them. Since it was my first week I was able to just shadow, watch, and learn from every interaction my boss had. Overall, this was the highlight of my first week because it made the sales role seem more real by seeing these farmers in person rather than them just being a voice on the other side of the phone.
Attached is an explanation for why Farmer’s Keeper wants to help farmers by contracting their grain.
Keegan Seifert Week One – Opus Packaging
Since I started my internship on May 11th I’ve been pretty busy. I have been working as a machinery and equipment intern at Opus Packaging. Opus Packaging works in corrugated packaging using “A Solution Based Packaging Approach.” As a whole the company is five separate locations, spanning over four midwestern states. I have worked for this Opus in the past as a summer work maintenance technician. This summer I will be using some of the knowledge of justification of machines, learned in my ABM classes, to help justify and learn about packaging machinery. Part of the work I will be doing with machinery is to install, and teach a software based maintenance program that allows for preventive maintenance (PM) to be done from either a tablet or a laptop. So far I haven’t had any big projects to work on. This week I worked on some information to be used in the justification for a large press, that will be used to print, cut and score boxes up to 113 inches wide. I used information of boxes that are transferred from our Indianapolis plant to the Grand Rapids plant. The prospective new press will be put into Indianapolis and will allow for thousands of dollars of savings, roughly $80k+ per year on trucking. Overall I have had a great time with the internship and can’t wait to see what else I will be able to work on over the summer.
Dylan Abbott week 1 – JBS USA / Pilgrims
This week was my first week at the Pilgrims plant in Cold Spring, Minnesota. It was an interesting but sort of slow week to get settled into my role and my way around the plant. Each day started at 5 am with orientation but at around 7 to 8 ish I was able to meet with my mentors. For the most part I began to shadow Zach, who is the assistant sales manager. We went through some of his daily processes, such as listening into the plant call and other sales calls, allocations and plant scheduling. On Wednesday the other interns and I were able to follow around Arif who is a plant manager in training for a plant tour. We toured the whole facility from where the chickens enter all the way to where they are fully processed and out the door. It was a very cool experience to witness and watch all the steps that the chicken has to go through. Im excited for next week because hopefully i am able to figure out my project for the summer which will be my main focus going forward. Im very eager to learn more and get to explore more about the company and the processes.
EEM 493: Week 1 Blog Post
Hi everyone!
May 17th was the first day of my 12 week journey as a Sustainable Food Systems at Bayer Crop Science. Bayer Crop Science works to focus on key agriculture objectives around the globe such as food security, population growth, technological advances, and climate change. Bayer takes part in finding solutions to combat these objectives and help stakeholders such as government and policy organizations all the way to the small-holder farmers. I am partaking in two projects that will work on developing solutions and researching different regions around the world in how Bayer can help be a part of key innovation and answers for people that need it most in agriculture.
It was an interesting first 2 weeks because I was able to start getting into a routine and learn how to navigate the Bayer System. I attended many on-boarding meetings and intern seminars that walked me through my role and what I would exactly be doing this summer. I was also able to meet other interns in an ice-breaker session on zoom and hear from experts at Bayer with their career experience in agriculture. However, the first week I was faced with multiple IT issues and it hindered myself from joining certain meetings and accessing certain spaces in the Bayer my-cloud. I learned patience is key and my mentors were a big help in helping me gain access, even though I am still not fully in the Bayer system. The answer for now is that progress has been made and will continue.
An interesting learning this week was a really cool seminar I attended called ACT4FOOD-ACT4CHANGE. The seminar was youth based and the objective was to bring youth representatives from around the world and talk about this global movement to provide safe, and nutritious food to all. The seminar worked through key issues countries face such as socio-economic conditions, and worked through possible solutions to provide opportunity to those who may not have it. I found it very interesting because the seminar’s key learnings connected back to one of Bayer’s goals in minimizing food insecurity around the world.
In the Bayer Crop Science Industry, I am working on the World Food Systems Summit updates and recently attended a meeting for what work is happening globally for bringing more sustainable solutions to the value chain system that incorporate and include all downstream and upstream players. I am also learning to understand key words and agriculture definitions that I was not aware of before starting the internship. Included below is a picture from the on-boarding process I received when going through the Bayer set-up process that I wanted to share. I am excited for what week 3 holds!
Farm Bureau Crop Insurance
This week Marc and I finished filing APH Reports which are yields and production reports on fields are were insured for last fall. Marc is the crop insurance agent I am working with majority of the summer. With APH Reports ending, we are starting Acreage Reports. Acreage Reports are new, current, or lost fields by a grower during the offseason.
The internship started a few weeks ago but my favorite part is going out to the growers and communicating with them on issues or just listening on what they have to say. With the last weeks high temperatures, crops started to take off quickly which made the visits to growers better.
USDA FSA Week 1
In this blog I would like to summarize everything that I have done since starting my internship (part-time) in January. It was a large task to onboard into the federal workforce. Jumping though hoops to get fingerprints done, taking courses in producer confidentiality, training for ethics in the workplace, obtaining my laptop and office space, and much more was done in the first month or so.
I received my first large project in February from the Michigan Conservation Chief. It is my duty to look at hundreds and hundreds of fields and farms, aerial imagery, for potentially converted wetlands. This is very important in order to ensure that producers are able to maintain their good standing for FSA programs and for preserving Michigan conservation. This project is now about to be in its second phase, more to come!
Since then, I have also been learning about other FSA programs (conservation taking up a vast majority of my time). Some of which are: Farm Loan Programs, Farm Storage and Facility Loans, Dairy Margin Coverage, Livestock Indemnity Program, Receivable Imaging System, and more.
A quick explanation of a some of these programs:
Farm Loan Programs or FLP is available for FSA participants that need a loan and cannot receive one from other lenders. The FSA will either provide one at a great interest rate or work with a lender to guarantee payment, allowing the government to assume the risk.
Farm Storage and Facility Loans are available for participants that want to fund construction of eligible storages. This eligibility is defined in one of our handbooks, 1-FSFL and goes extremely in depth. Did you know that you can apply for a loan to house a vat of maple syrup?
And so that, albeit briefly, summarizes everything up to this point. In future postings, I will be going further in depth on specific programs and areas of the FSA.
Corteva Week 1
I started my internship with Corteva Agriscience on May 17th. Corteva Agriscience is publicly traded, global pure-play agriculture company that provides growers around the world with one of the top portfolios in the world. I will be focusing on the Ohio and Michigan division. My first week was spent doing onboarding paperwork, setting up my Corteva software profiles, introduction of my research project and meeting the retail locations. My second week was spent mainly on the virtual intern training zooms. Throughout the week, I learned more about the company as a whole, the different ways growers can purchase seed from Corteva. I am impressed that Corteva really forms to the grower and allows them to purchase seed from retailers, regional seed brands and independent seed salespeople. Prior to this internship, I assumed I had a good idea on what it meant working as a professional within agriculture. But my mentor, trainers and managers have already shaped me into an improved agriculture professional.
The past two weeks, I have only been in training, but I am eager to complete training to get out in the field, build relationships with retailers and conduct my research project. I am very excited to continue my internship with Cordova Agriscience!
Attached is a picture of the welcome screen from my intern orientation.
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