Seven Sleepy Eye FFA Members attended the CRC Discovery Day. They included: l to r – Zach Dominguez, Clark Lazatin, Ari Krzmarzick, Taylor Berkner, Alex Confer, Kaytlyn Romberg, and Lucia Martinez
On Thursday, July 27, Sleepy Eye FFA Members attended the Career Discovery Day at Central Region Cooperative. The members included: Taylor Berkner, Alex Confer, Zach Dominguez, Ari Krzmarzick, Clark Lazatin, Lucia Martinez, Kaytlyn Romberg. Advisors Mary Hoffmann, Katie Emmett, and Paul Hendrickx were in attendance as well as McKayla Carlson Hughes.
The day started at the main office of CRC with Megan Hoffmann, giving background information on cooperatives and how they operate as well as an overview of CRC and some of the career opportunities and divisions of CRC.
Then it was onto the grain division. Carly showed us the unloading zone, grain bins, and dryer. They gave an overview of the large scale operations of the grain division and how they ship it in trucks and the rail.
The morning continued with the feed division as Brad and Sonya shared information on the roles of the employees in this area, how the mill works, who the customers are, the ingredients in the different feeds, and the automation of the mill.
After seeing all of the divisions near the main office building, we traveled to the CRC site east of Sleepy Eye to the Agronomy division. We heard from sales employees and learned about the customers, acres, territories, and educational paths to sales. We also heard from Jordan in Operations and the guys in the Energy Division. They shared information on the numbers and types of equipment, types of trucks, capacity of the trucks, truck routes, and the different products and where they come from as well as the rail system.
Next, we entered the BCA facility where Al taught us about the many different lawn fertilizers and ice melt products manufactured there. He discussed how they get the bags and ingredients and we saw the bagging automation station. From the machine that weighs out ingredients and fills the bags to the robots that stack the bags on pallets and wrap the pallets, this part of the business was fascinating.
Last, we heard from Brian about the Shop. The building was incredible and had numerous overhead doors to accommodate all of the different trucks and equipment. There is such a variety of work due to all of the different machines and maintenance on the equipment.
We are very thankful to have had so many of the CRC employees in the different divisions talk to us about what they do in the cooperative and the educational paths available for the various careers there.
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