Hearing From Young Ag Voices

One of the highlights of the recent 2014 Mid America CropLife Association (MACA) annual meeting was hearing from the winners of the MACA Young Leader Scholarship Program. Now in its second year, this program provides financial assistance to students looking for careers in agriculture at 12 different universities across the country. The students also have the opportunity to attend the annual meeting to learn more about the agricultural world and meet key industry representatives.

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At the MACA meeting, each of these students shared with attendees some of their experiences as part of various internships served over the summer months. Here, they got to work in all areas of agriculture. “I really enjoyed working with Co-Alliance, an ag retailer, because I got to do a lot of direct work with the farmers themselves,” said Nolan Sampson, a student from Purdue University.

Kelsey Mussman, a student at the University of Minnesota, echoed this sentiment. “When I was working for Genesis Coop, they were so flexible in what I was interested in doing, which was marketing,” said Mussman. “So the company let me make some agronomy sell sheets to distribute to customers, as well as utilize them on social media.”

Other students worked with agricultural technology as part of their internships. “One of the most exciting things I worked on at John Deere during my internship was the company’s new planter,” said Jeffrey Barnes, a student from Iowa State University, “This unit will revolutionize the market by taking the planting speeds farmers can plant seed from 5 mph to 10 mph without losing placement accuracy. That’s pretty special.”

Jade Kampsen, a student at South Dakota State University, had a similar experience during her time at Central Valley Ag. “I didn’t grow up with a big farming background, so everything I did with agricultural education was a big learning experience,” said Kampsen. “My first ag class was precision ag, which I hated. But then, I ended up working with two precision ag specialists at Central Valley learning about variable-rate seeding and fertilizer and I realized that that was the best class of my life!”

In the end, it was clear all 12 students had really enjoyed their times with the summer internships and learned more about the world of agriculture along the way. “One of the most special parts of my internship at Pioneer was being part of the team there,” said Nick Steppig, a student from the University of Illinois. “That made me feel like I was part of something much bigger, which was being part of production agriculture.”

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