For over 10 years, our Agronomy department has offered several internships. Our program is developed so that students interested in agriculture can gain real world experience and knowledge. Not only are they learning about different jobs and roles in agronomy, but they are an essential part of our FCS team. They support and help our Agronomist during this fast-paced season. FCS strives to hire locally so we can continue to support the next generation of farmers. This past year, we had three Northwest Iowa interns, and one was a returning intern from 2020!

Adison Evans

Adison Evans is originally from Inwood but lives in Boyden, IA, and recently graduated from South Dakota State University with a degree in Agriculture Science. Adison grew up on her family farm, and agriculture has always been a big part of her life. This past summer she helped Mike Tiedeman and Aric Den Herder out of our Ireton location. Adison is a second-year intern, and she could come in knowing the basics of logistics and really focus her effort on learning. She expanded her agronomy knowledge on weeds and chemicals and got to spend more time with customers.

She really felt like the team trusted her abilities and was given more responsibilities this year. Day-to-day, Adison worked on scouting, chemical runs to customers, seed sorting, and test plots. Adison’s summer project involved testing a new product on some of our customers' fields. This involved collecting soil samples and doing stand counts to compare the treated vs. untreated fields. Adison hopes to stay local and pursue a career using her degree.

Haley Borman

Haley Borman grew up on a farm Southwest of Rock Rapids and is a Junior at South Dakota State. She grew up on her family farm working alongside her family and driving her passion for agriculture. She is majoring in Agronomy and hopes to work at a cooperative in the future so she can work side-by-side with producers. This summer, Haley worked with Mark DeKam in our Sioux Center location. She spent a lot of her time crop scouting and identifying various weeds in the fields. 

Haley’s summer project revolved around corn rootworm tracking. She hung traps in various fields and tracked what kind of insect pressure they were seeing. She was surprised at how localized the corn rootworm pressure is in our area and directly seeing the impact of how years of corn on corn can affect the beetles. When she graduates, Haley would like to work at a coop that allows her to also farm with her family.

Davis Duistermars

Davis Duistermars also grew up on a family farm in NW Iowa. His family has row crops as well as two hog barns. Getting interested in ag came naturally since he worked alongside his dad for most of his life. He enjoyed the work, and his ag teacher at MOC—Floyd Valley was also very influential in his life. Davis is currently a Junior at Iowa State and is majoring in Agriculture Education. Davis worked out of the Sanborn location and worked mostly with Ben Van Beek and Grant Schuver. 

Over the summer, he did a lot of crop scouting, stand checks, and even hung seed signs. His favorite days were days around the locations. He learned a lot about the different jobs and really got a close-up view of how a coop operates. He was most surprised at the dedication the coop employees have for our customers—the long hours the employees put in and how life revolves around the customers. Davis also worked on a corn rootworm project. He would set up traps and then collect the traps and track the data a week later. Once he graduates, Davis would like to work in ag but is still deciding on a direction. He really enjoyed his time at FCS and enjoyed the agronomy sales experience.