Farming Is a Profession of Hope
Written by Olivia Throssell
“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Monsanto is unarguably a household name for numerous reasons. While many individuals are acting out their convictions about the company, one University of Hawaii at Hilo (UHH) student decided to get an inside look at it. Senior and Agriculture major Miguel Bravo participated in an internship via Monsanto in which he worked at their Maui location.
“I found out about this internship through one of my professors as he knew I wanted to continue farming after college,” the Agriculture major stated.
Miguel Bravo on Monsanto's farm. Photo courtesy of Monsanto.
During the internship, Monsanto assigned Bravo a project which consisted of completing three different experiments. One such experiment involved cultivating corn for Maui seed production. As the island has a year round, steady climate, this experiment helped the company generate a seed that can flourish throughout the entire year.
Currently, most North American corn production takes place in the Midwest, a location that, like other regions of the country, experiences winter. Since corn cannot prosper in winter, at least on the American continent, production must halt until the weather warms. Hawaii-based exercises, like Bravo's, evidence that Hawaii's environment negates seasonal planting of corn seed. Such an environment also purports conventional cross-breeding and marker-assisted cross-breeding (an indirect selection process in which a trait of interest is chosen) can be achieved faster as no waiting period exists.
Another experiment Bravo took part in involved precision irrigation. He had to ascertain just how much water irrigating plant roots would require. This particular exercise depended on knowledge of climatic factors, soil factors, and plant state development, knowledge the senior gained from all of his courses, especially Plant Physiology 310: Plant Growth/Development.
“Every single one of my classes applies the agricultural techniques I was doing at the company," the Agriculture major asserted. "My plant physiology class gave me the basic understanding of how plant physiology works [by addressing, for example] how plants take in their nutrients [and] how to identify different symptoms ... [of] ... nutrient deficient [plants] or [plants with] ... pathogen related diseases."
"This knowledge really helped me be successful in my internship," Bravo admit. “I also couldn’t have done this [experiment] without learning ... how to create spreadsheets that c[ould] contain farming data. I learned [to do] this from the Agriculture Microcomputing class (Agriculture 110). The data I collected was properly managed and I was able to present it in ... reliabl[y] ... thanks thanks to th[at] class.”
Out of his entire experience, one aspect Bravo distinctly admired was Monsanto's concern with safety. Before starting on any work, the senior would attend a safety briefing each morning. The meetings, being mandatory, prevented employees from doing wrong and then getting in trouble, a process which the Agriculture major viewed as the company's attempt to care for its people.
Bravo with corn ears. Photo courtesy of Monsanto.
Post-briefing, Bravo would enter the field and either attend to the plants his experiments needed or supervise required protocols for tractors and creations of new fields. As his internship ended, his enthusiastic attitude allowed him the freedom to administer experiments of his choice. At the very end, the senior presented all that he found from the experiments to a group of 35 individuals.
From the experiment involving irrigation, for example, Bravo noted the company could decrease its water use by more than 50%, thus increasing water conservation. Outside his experiments, he realized Monsanto had altered its the protocol and chemical protocols of its pesticides so that they do not affect pollinating bees. Although the company does not own bee hives, it tends to bees to ensure the insects leave its site safely and do not contaminate beehives.
Bravo closed, “I see myself continuing working at Monsanto after college so that I can bring back this knowledge to my country of Colombia and help establish an agriculture based economy.”
For more information on this internship please see the internship portion of the Monsanto Hawaii website.
