A Summer Spent in Old Shawneetown

This Summer I was very fortunate to spend my time with Bunge North America at one of their grain elevators located in Old Shawneetown. If I'm being honest I have to say that I was rather nervous because of the fact I didn't have much experience when it came to grain elevators. I was excited to learn about what it is that makes Bunge a successful company and how grain elevators play a vital role in their business.

The first couple weeks I was in Old Shawneetown I spent most of my time touring the facility and observing all the different jobs throughout the elevator. I had no idea how much went in to running a grain elevator. There are so many different jobs spanning from the marketing and operations side. The three main places I worked in were the main office, the control room and the scale house. When I was in the main office I usually was reviewing contracts that the merchandisers had written. In the control room I observed how the grain was moved from the bins to the barges out on the river. Lastly when I was in the scale house I mainly probed trucks and weighed them out. These were all jobs I had no experience with, but was lucky enough to learn all about them.

Not only did I learn about the many jobs at a grain elevator, but I got to experience the atmosphere among employees in an agriculture related job. I really feel like there is much more of a laid back feel  to agribusiness jobs just because of the farmers that you will work with and those who choose to work in such positions. I got along very well with the trainees who were at the location. They're were actually three different trainees and each of them was very easy to work with. The manager really taught me a lot about how to conduct yourself and how you should go about managing a group of people. I think the skills all the employees taught me will be the biggest take away I have from this Summer because they can be used in any field I choose to go into. I'm very pleased with this experience and owe a huge thanks to Bunge and all of the people I worked with for 12 weeks.