About This Episode
Shay Foulk brings Tim Moon, a summer intern at his seed business and farm operation in northern Illinois, on the podcast a few weeks into the job. Moon grew up in Oswego, a Chicago suburb, with no farm background beyond visiting family and friends who farmed. He settled on agriculture late in high school, chose Iowa State, and is heading into his sophomore year studying agronomy. The connection came through a landowner relationship with his family.
Foulk's pitch to other operations is to flip how internships are framed. Rather than asking what a freshman can do for the business, he offered Moon a program shaped around what Moon wants to learn: business, seed cleaning and conditioning, or crop scouting. He tells listeners to write an internship packet with a job description and a rough plan, then stay flexible enough to let a student steer it toward the next job they want.
The economics are on the table. Moon earns $15 an hour with time and a half over 40 hours, works 11 or 12 weeks, and has housing and a truck provided, which Foulk figures at $10,000 to $12,000 for the summer. He frames that as an investment rather than a cost, arguing an intern also brings back process improvements. Moon leaves in early August for an Iowa State harvest class that runs into mid-October.
“I think we maybe need to look at it the other way of what can we as a company, as an employer do for the people that are going through college.”
— Shay Foulk
Key Takeaways
Moon is paid $15 an hour with time and a half above 40 hours, plus housing and a truck, roughly $10,000 to $12,000 across 11 or 12 weeks.
Foulk built the internship around what the student wants to learn: business, seed cleaning and conditioning, or crop scouting.
The stated goal is making Moon more hireable next year, not extracting cheap labor for one summer.
Write an internship packet with a job description and a rough plan, then leave room to adjust as the student's interests emerge.
Freshmen struggle to land internships at large ag companies, which is exactly the gap a farm or local ag business can fill to build a hiring pipeline.
Moon had no farm upbringing and came from a Chicago suburb, a reminder that the pipeline is wider than farm kids.
Full Transcript
Shay
Foulk: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today you have Shay Foulk and Tim Moon. Tim is an intern here with our seed business and farm operation. How are you today, Tim?
Tim
Moon: Pretty good.
Shay
Foulk: Yeah, you were out looking at some ugly corn here. It's May 30th and we have some corn and some cover crop that's looking pretty rough. And generally speaking, northern Illinois just It just needs a rain. So if you're in the Midwest right now and you need a rain, we feel for you for sure. But I wanted to have Tim on here just for a few minutes to talk a little bit about, you know, what we have going as far as this internship is. And mainly for the farm operations listening to this, I wanted you to think about, you know, how can you provide value to people that might be interested in being a part of your organization? Not that they have to commit to anything, what program can you put together, talk a little bit about our experience. And then, Tim, we're going to follow up with you at the end of the internship since, you know, you're just getting started here.
But if you could give, you know, just give me like a 1-minute background on who you are and where you're going to college and kind of how you wound up here.
Tim
Moon: So, yeah, my name is Tim Moon. I'm originally from Oswego, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. So I never really grew up on a farm or was in the farm background, but I had family and friends that had a farm, so we'd always go there and just screw around, and I always had a grand time. And it wasn't until towards the end of high school to when I kind of had taken things serious, and I'm like, all right, now I got to figure out what I want to do, and farming is what stuck out to me the most. And I went around, toured some few, a few colleges, and Iowa State University stuck out to me the most, and currently I'm going to be a sophomore this upcoming fall.
Shay
Foulk: Yeah, that's awesome. And in full transparency, we have a landowner relationship with some family at Tim's, and one of the meetings that I was up there, I just said— I was asked if, you know, Tim could come along, and I was like, yeah, that'd be great. And I think at the time I offered you a full-time job. I said, if you need something to do down the road, feel free to come join us. But thought this would be a good way to get started just as an internship.
And, you know, the interest that you had in coming back to the farm operation, not being from, you know, not being from a family farm, growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, what do you think, you know, and I know you're just getting started in the internship here, but what do you think is kind of most attractive about this as the future or, you know, part of being a part of agriculture, I guess, what kind of attracted you to that?
Tim
Moon: I think what attracted me the most was the overall environment. Just the thought of being able to be outside every day and be one with the environment, I guess.
Shay
Foulk: Yeah. And it's, you know, even on days like this when it's 85 and hot, but no, it's, I think that sentiment is awesome. And those of us that grew up on farms and farm operations, that might be like a closely held secret of why we enjoy it. And I think sometimes Those of us listening maybe take advantage of that or don't think about it as often as we should, as we're pretty fortunate to be able to, you know, spend time in the outdoors, spend time doing things that we love, running equipment and whatever else. So you ended up going with agronomy. Are you liking that so far?
Tim
Moon: Oh yeah, it's been a blast getting my foot into the door of learning about plants and different kinds of soils and all that.
Shay
Foulk: And, you know, one of the things that when we talked about this internship, you know, it's hard in an intern environment, especially as a freshman, to go to some of these companies and say, you know, I want to work for you, whether it's, you know, a Corteva or a Bayer or a local co-op or something, because you're a freshman, you don't have experience, you want to provide value back to the organization. And I remember being in your shoes and thinking, man, I don't know how I'm going to, make this work or what the decision will be. And for those of you listening, what I offered to Tim was, why don't you just come to our operation and we can make this internship what you want it to be. So if you want to learn about business, we'll teach you about business. If you want to learn about seed cleaning and conditioning, we'll teach you about seed cleaning and conditioning.
If you want to do crop scouting, you know, you're out looking at fields today. If you want to, if you want to learn on that, we'll dive into that. And I'm not saying we have it figured out, but I think there's a huge value in that because we can kind of curate the message and curate, you know, here's what you learned in your internship, here's where you want to focus moving forward. And so I would encourage you, if you run an ag business or you're running a farm operation, build an internship packet, build a layout of here's what the job description is, here's a rough idea of what we think that we would have you do, but be flexible. Give these young people entering the world of agriculture an opportunity to kind of shape their own path.
And the other thing that I told you, Tim, and I stand by is I want to make this as valuable for you to get hired or to have a different internship if you want to next year. You know, and I think we are maybe used to the intern environment being, what can you do for our company? And I think we maybe need to look at it the other way of what can we as a company, as an employer do for the people that are going through college. Hopefully, you know, hopefully that, uh, maps out to be true, and hopefully we can build off of that. Um, Tim, what are you— what are you getting paid an hour here?
Tim
Moon: Uh, currently I make $15, but any time over 40 hours a week is time and a half.
Shay
Foulk: And are, are you happy with that?
Tim
Moon: Oh yeah.
Shay
Foulk: Okay. So, and, and I bring that up from the standpoint of Tim's going to be with us for 11 weeks, roughly 11 or 12 weeks. So, you know, I told him we can focus those 40 hours on the internship. And I promised him those 40 hours, but there's always stuff to do on a farm, right? There's always stuff to do in a business. And anything that you want to do above and beyond that is worth that. And when I, you know, when I do the math on that, I'll take this to kind of full term here. Let's say that we pay Tim $10,000 or $12,000 over the course of the summer. We're providing housing, we're providing a truck, some company stuff, you know, nothing major there.
But if we take $10,000 and invest that back into Tim or invest that back into an intern and just help them be interested in the world of agriculture and show them ways to be professional and to be business people, that's pretty darn impactful. And I know there's things that Tim is gonna bring to the organization that he's gonna help us develop of, you know, hey, maybe you guys should be doing this differently or helping us build out processes and procedures. That elevate us. So don't look at it from a cost standpoint, I guess is what I would say, but look at it of what is that investment back into your business. So you actually, you're going to wrap up, I think, first week of August or something like that. You're headed to do a, I think, what is it, a harvest class in August?
Tim
Moon: Yep. And in the fall, I have a class called Agronomy 279, which is about harvest. So It'll begin the first week of August and end pretty much after harvest in middle of October.
Shay
Foulk: Yeah, that's awesome. I think the continued innovation and adaption at land grant universities, Iowa State, you know, maybe a little bias on it being very progressive and having some awesome opportunities there. But Tim, I guess ultimately just excited to have you on the team and, you know, I guess, is there anything else that you'd like to add or anything that you're really looking forward to this summer?
Tim
Moon: Um, I mean, I don't have too much to add, but I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the summer, see what it has to bring.
Shay
Foulk: Yeah. So anyways, just thought that we'd provide a little value and perspective. If anybody listening has questions on, you know, hey Shay, how did you structure the program? What information did you put together? What kind of communication? Is there something I should be doing for my farm operation? You guys can shoot me an email, shay@agviewsolutions.com. Hope you get value out of this. Hope you catch some rain if you need it. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Ag View Pitch.