Fifteen

Issue date: 5/12/09 Section: News

Sloanies in tractors: (top to bottom) Samantha Joseph MBA '09, Pallavi Konwar MBA '09, and Juliet Duffy MBA '09 take a ride in a John Deere tractor at TMT farms

Top row: Samantha Joseph MBA '09, Ted Carstensen MBA '09, Anju Mathew MBA '09, Brede Wegener SO, and Chester Liu MBA '09; bottom row: Dan Johnson MBA '09, Dennis Rivera MBA '09, Jenny Kwan MBA '09, Elizabeth McVay Greene MBA '10, Christina Santini DUSP '09, Pallavi Konwar MBA '09, Christina Ingersoll MBA '10, Juliet Duffy MBA '09, Steven Aller MBA '09, and Melissa Webster MBA '09

The MIT Charter of 1861 that marked the founding of this institution declares that the school will be committed to "the advancement, development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce." One might wonder what has become of our commitment to agriculture (and why in an era of hugely consequential food debates we aren't focusing on it). Last month, 15 MIT students brought that piece of our heritage back to life during the first ever MIT Sloan Field-to-Fork Agribusiness Trek.

The purpose of our trip was to gain a broad view of the food and agriculture value chain, from farmer to processor to trader to consumer. Since the U.S. heartland is the epicenter of industrial scale agriculture, we packed our bags and headed to Bismarck, North Dakota. Over the course of the next five days, we experienced unparalleled hospitality and engaged in insightful discussions with elected officials, farmers, and business leaders of how our food makes its way from the farmers' fields to our plates.

Our meetings with Bill Price of Missouri River Feeders and Terry Wanzek of TMT Farms revealed the increasingly important role of a strong manager behind a farming operation. Bill, for example, discussed how he buys, feeds, and markets 8,000 head of cattle, watching feed prices, weather patterns, and world markets to make strategic decisions about how to run a profitable business.

Talking with Bill was a humbling experience. All those terms we have memorized for strategy and operations courses, the butterflies and straddles that we have learned to structure in our derivatives class: this guy is living them. Over and over again our conversations reinforced the idea that the 21st century farmer might not wear overalls or drive tractors; she might be sitting in a board room.

On the processing side, we had the chance to visit Great River Energy/Blue Flint Ethanol, American Crystal Sugar, Dakota Prairie Organic Flour, and Dakota Growers' Pasta plants. We were overwhelmed by the beer stink at the ethanol plant, the pile of big black beets at the sugar facility, the tastiness of the pasta produced from North Dakota durum wheat, and the hazards of one trekker accidentally pushing the emergency stop button at a flour mill.

Our meeting at Cargill in Minneapolis pulled the whole trip together. As an intermediary, the company engages with multiple stakeholders in the agribusiness value chain and holds vast knowledge about trends and emerging opportunities in global commodity markets. Having just seen comparatively small players on the production side, we benefited from learning how a global corporation shapes its strategy in such a way that links producers, processors, and ultimately consumers.

One of the most fulfilling aspects of the trip was the conversation among Sloanies of one of the critical questions facing the world: how to feed more people more nutritious food using fewer resources. Armed with insights from this trip, members of our group are now positioned to pursue solutions to this challenge and to carry on a founding legacy of MIT, though perhaps now through the application of management science.

And in case you are wondering how a 10,000 acre farm gets worked efficiently, just ask anyone who went on the trek - we have all driven Case New Holland tractors and would be happy to describe the awesomeness of operating a $350,000 piece of machinery.

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