AgGrad Podcast

Persistence Pays Off
The farming & entrepreneurial ventures of Jarrod Creasy.

It’s with a sense of self-assuredness that Jarrod talks about the plans he made for being an entrepreneur and first generation cattle rancher with his wife. The only catch? He didn’t own land and he hadn’t even asked his future wife on a date, but he knew what was in his heart and in his passion. Through persistence, hard work, networking, education and more persistence, Jarrod & Becca Creasy are the proud owners of 920 Cattle and Company in southeast Georgia. But that’s not all. This ranching power couple have gone above and beyond in creating a multi-faceted entrepreneurial agriculture adventure. 

This is a re-release of an interview Tim Hammerich did for the "AgTech, So What?" Podcast by Sarah Nolet. You can find the original episode here: https://www.agtechsowhat.com/bushtechpodcast/2019/09/26/episode-50-tim-hammerich

Tim Hammerich is the Founder of AgGrad and the host of the Future of Agriculture podcast. Tim grew up on a hobby farm in Northern California selling pigs, goats and ducks. After 8 years working in a feed and grain business, Tim saw an underserved market for helping young people get jobs in ag and agtech. He founded AgGrad to fill the gap.  

AgGrad began as a ‘traditional’ recruiting company where Tim would do the legwork of recruiting talent for agribusiness. It’s since become about helping employees find their place in modern agriculture through a wealth of content for job seekers and employees. 

In this episode, Tim shares his insights on what agtech companies are looking for, tips for getting and staying hired, and ideas for how all ag companies, including farms, can hire ‘right’ from the start.

Don’t be fooled by John Romo’s title as a first year high school agriculture teacher in South Texas. It may seem as if he is a rookie, but he’s more of a veteran than one would guess by his young age. Not only did he graduate from Texas A&M with his undergraduate degree, but he also got his masters from Oklahoma State University. Between the two degrees, he spent time internationally in Ghana working in school-based agricultural education with AgriCorps before becoming a recruiter for their fellowship program, then heading back to Ghana for more outreach work, and then coming back, full circle, to South Texas.

While she may have grown up in the New York City suburbs, Connie Bowen now resides on a farm in small town Scio, Oregon. An entrepreneurial fellowship program for Venture for America helped combine her interest in conservation, engineering and cooking. Using that experience as a springboard, she is now working for Farmacopia Farms! This farm is more than just a co-op or a farm, it’s a group working for a cause. It seems that Connie is on the cusp of all things new and exciting in the world of Ag Tech! 

Mindy McBee knew that she had a passion for working with people but if you had told her she was going to manage pricing and feed for Cargill Feed & Nutrition, she might not have believed you. Mindy began her career journey at Kansas State University in the apparel design program. She found herself navigating through Cargill taking trainings and moving upwards in her career, before she found the opportunity to be the pricing supervisor.

Locus Agricultural Solutions provides soil amendments to improve its physical or chemical properties. As the Vice President of Agricultural Operations at Locus Ag, Alexander “Alex” Fotsch manages the product development team. He also can be found traveling, networking, working with universities and extension agents, as well as managing the company’s financial forecast and business model.

For someone in his late 20’s, Alex may seem a little “young” for this large of a role, but the challenges that he’s accepted in his young career has been just as pivotal as the amendments that they sell in saturating his life with the opportunity for growth.

Read the full article at https://aggrad.com/category/video/

Originally from a cow-calf operation where “if you tried to stick a drill in the ground, it might break,” Jonathan Williams found success in a career that he never would have expected. Jonathan is a regional product agronomist for Hoegemeyer Hybrids. A career that is tasked with crop science, proactive continued education, one-on-one relationships with growers, and lots of traveling - it seems that Jonathan has found his niche.

Meet the people that literally wrote the book on launching your career. Dr. Kerry Litzenberg and Codie Wright join us to share their book Launchers: Don’t Just Take a Job, Launch Your Career. The book was inspired by many questions posed to them by students who were exploring their career options. They hoped to relieve some of the common frustrations seen in current populations of students. “There is this mounting pressure to decide ‘what am I going to do?’. And if you don’t know that, it can be very daunting and very exhausting,” says Wright This book is meant for proactive individuals that want to own their career through personal individual development and growth. “What we find is that you learn in your twenties so you can apply what you have learned in your thirties and you can reap what you have sown in your forties and fifties,” explains Codie Wright.

Read the full article at https://aggrad.com/category/video/

Growing up on a dairy farm, Bo Harstine always thought that if you had an interest in science and animals that you had to be a veterinarian. Through an internship at Select Sires that opened up his awareness to the growing technological genetic advancements in the cattle industry, Bo has been able to find his job not only as a researcher in cattle breeding services but also as a university professor.

If you had an idea and were asked to take time off school, give up all your resources, couch surf and spend your time attempting to fundraise millions of dollars - would you do it? Matthew Rooda did in 2015 when he and his co-founder started forward with an idea to automate swine care and the current health care industry through agricultural technologies that weren’t developed as of yet. The result was admittance into an accelerator program, a semester off from school, investors, development, and a new business - SwineTech.