Agsysmt 3191 Internship

Nick Clymer 12/15/16

Nick Clymer

Summer 2016 Nick Clymer 12/15/16 This past summer I was an Agronomy Sales intern with Cargill AgHorizons, later changed to Cargill Ag Supply Chain- North American.

How I Found My Internship: The simple way to say how I found my internship was through the fall career expo talking with Cargill representatives there. I then interviewed with them the next day and got an internship offer a week later. However, there is a lot more background to the story that helped me get the job. To start from the beginning was a whole year before that when I had an interview at the fall career fair with one of Cargill’s employee that worked at the Sydney soybean processing plant. Unfortunately I didn’t work for Cargill the previous summer but still made a connection with the employee during that interview. I also talked with the guy when Cargill held “officer hours” at the Ag Administration Library and during a couple different club meetings when he was on campus. With that being said, when I walked into the interview the day after career fair last fall, I felt pretty confident because I knew that man pretty well and he knew my background fairly well before even sitting down for a formal interview. I feel like that was the biggest help for receiving an internship offer. With that company being Cargill, that guy didn’t work in the recruiting department so the only say he had was on the piece of paper he scanned in to university recruiting regarding the interview. I ended up seeing him two weeks later on campus and told him I got an offer. He said that’s good because he recommended me for a job- whether it was operations working at the grain elevator or agronomy. Prior to the career fair I researched companies that I would potentially work for. I wasn’t sure (and still not exactly) as to what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something with the agronomy/precision part of agriculture or working at a grain elevator (second option). For my interview with Cargill it was for either the operations or agronomy. I told him that I would prefer agronomy but also would consider operations. He told me that Cargill would reply one way or another two weeks after that. I got a call from Cargill’s University Recruiting a week later offering me an internship as an Agronomy Sales intern. After reviewing the offer for a couple weeks I ended up accepting the position based in Benson, Minnesota.

Overview of the Company and My Position Cargill is one of the largest private companies in the world and really recruit Ohio State hard. It was founded in 1865 as a grain storage facility. Now it has over 150,000 employees in 70 countries that serves the agricultural, food, financial, and industrial industries. Of the 50 or so business units within Cargill, my unit was called CASC-NA: Cargill Ag Supply Chain North America. The business unit included grain merchandising, grain storage, and formally agronomy. The agronomy part of CASC had 18 locations within four states. Unfortunately, on Nick Clymer 12/15/16 the third day of my internship during orientation week in Sioux Falls, South Dakota with 10 other interns, it was announced that they were looking to sell the Crop Inputs locations. About halfway through the summer I learned that Crop Production Services would be purchasing the agronomy part of Cargill. They projected the sale would be complete on September 1st. That really changed my summer goals as an intern.

Description of Primary Tasks Going into the summer I was not really sure exactly what I would be doing. The first week of my internship didn’t make it any clearer both because Monday through Thursday was orientation and Friday my boss took the crop scout intern and I to the three locations we would be working at. Under normal circumstances my boss would have already figured out what my role would be but after learning of the possible sale everything was in the air- including what his future would be with Cargill or the new company. Before the sale, the main thing I was going to do was promote their precision ag program. I actually got some training with the regional precision agriculture specialists with Cargill to learn all about it so that I would be able to inform farmers of what it entailed and where to start at. That was all cancelled out unfortunately because you don’t want to sell something that won’t exist in three months. I was located in West Central Minnesota region which actually had an OSU agronomy student intern at my location the year before so during the school year I asked him questions about what he did and my boss actually sent me his spreadsheet of who he talked to about NextField the previous summer so I would be able to continue that. The summer before that an ASM student interned in one of the locations I was at for operations and is actually now located two hours away at a location with Cargill full time.

Major Accomplishments and Learning Experiences My main tasks throughout the summer were working with the crop scout intern scouting fields and running the test plot. I spent a lot of time at the test plot collecting data and making sure everything was going smoothly with it. The main agronomist normally in charge of the plot was fired midway through summer so I ended up running a main part of it. There was a fertilizer variable corn plot in the front with 30 different corn varieties and 12 different soy bean varieties in the back area. Another big responsibility that was new to me was that I had to make my own schedule and decide what I did on a day to day basis. My boss had a rough outline of what he expected of me so I a good measurement for him was to see how I did when I was self-guided. The great thing about Cargill was that I felt they really cared about the interns and wanted us to have a well-rounded education during the summer. I went to a couple seed dealer kickoffs, multiple CCA credit trainings and grain sales training sessions for interns. One of my goals was to shadow different agronomists and help them out, shadow grain merchandisers and shadow Nick Clymer 12/15/16 operations managers. I toured around five different facilities in the region to see how Cargill operates their facilities.

Recommendations for Future Students I was 14 hours away from home for 12 weeks but I would do it all again. Don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone and go to a random state for a summer. There is so much I learned with living in a bed and breakfast for the summer, so many people I met, and so many experiences I would never have had the chance to get if I wanted to stay in the great state of Ohio and not get out of my comfort zone. It was kind of nice to be in a new situation where nobody new me except that I was a Buckeye. Going to all the networking events you can while in college is important because without that I probably wouldn’t have had as good of chance to get this internship.

Conclusion I was really excited getting this internship, especially so early in the semester so that I didn’t need to take a lot of time looking at other opportunities throughout the school year. If the internship turned out like it was supposed to be before the sale I would have really enjoyed it and learned a lot but sadly I didn’t get the sales experience that I was expecting. As the sale was announced the higher-ups told people “business as usual” but realistically it wasn’t. It felt like we were basically in a stand still waiting for the company to be sold so they could figure out what the future entailed. The hourly employees were in a bad mood a lot because corporate chose who went with CPS and who stayed with Cargill. I really liked Cargill before the internship because they really pride themselves as getting good interns then hiring a majority of them on as trainee positions after graduation. I was really hoping on going through those steps but with the sale that was not able to happen. I have heard people say that successful individuals have a unique ability to adapt to change so I was able to work in a changing environment and see how truly business works while in a transitional phase. After being an agronomy sales intern I think that I still want to involve agronomy in my future job and enjoyed and learned a lot during my 12 weeks with Cargill.