Seven Sleepy Eye FFA Members attended the first ever CRC Discovery Day. They included: l to r – Ethan Schwartz, Emma Fischer, Izzy Kunkel, Kaytlyn Romberg, Lucia Martinez, Chloe Howe, and Noemi Rodriguez.
By: Chloe Howe, Chapter Reporter
On Thursday, July 28, Sleepy Eye FFA Members attended the first ever Discovery Day at Central Region Cooperative. The members included: Emma Fischer, Kaytlyn Romberg, Ethan Schwartz, Lucia Martinez, Chloe Howe, Izzy Kunkel, and Noemi Rodriguez. Advisors Mary Hoffmann, Katie Emmett, and Paul Hendrickx were in attendance as well.
The day started at the main office of CRC with Nate, CEO of CRC, giving background information on cooperatives and how they operate as well as his career path.
Next, Sue talked to students about career opportunities within the accounting field as well as an explanation of the different divisions and how they each have their own accounting departments.
Then it was onto the grain division. Carly and Jay 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 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 Mike in Sales 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 heard from Brian and Jordan 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.
Last, 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 cool bagging automation with our own eyes. From the machine that weighs out ingredients and fills the bags to the robots that stack the bags on pallets and wrap the pallets, it was really fascinating to see.
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.