Internship Project
In the effort to become more entrenched in the California dairy community and become a preferred employer in their market, Cargill hires a number of summer interns from the main agricultural universities on the west coast. As a graduate from the University of California -Davis, I was hired as a Dairy Management Consultant (DMC) Intern for the summer of 2000.
Cargill gives the interns an inside look at the company's culture, principals, and main areas of business. As a DMC Intern, I was also able to participate in the yearly marketing meeting, the first Intern School in the Pacific Coast District, shadow the Dairy Management Consultants and participate in a summer-long project in the market.
The intern projects are then presented to interns and Cargill managers from across the country at the Cargill headquarters in Minneapolis. The projects assigned, not only provide a great learning experience to the interns but show case what Cargill Animal Nutrition is attempting to do in the market for the benefit of the dairy producers. My particular project relates to the profitability of feeding programs and the different areas dairymen must monitor to keep up with such information. Improving profitability and helping dairymen understand the factors that drive it, is a key effort made by DMCs with their customers, and is what sets them apart from competitor's sales forces.
The project assignment was to have 20 to 30 dairies participate in a lactating feed cost-per-hundred-weigh-of-milk analysis and an evaluation of their cow care and comfort management. In the project, the feed costs for dry cows (cows not in lactation) were not included. The project participants were located in the Stanislaus, San Juaquin and Merced counties in the north central valley of California (see Figure 3).
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