This domestic 鈥淪tudy-USA鈥� trip will follow fertilizer as it travels through the supply chain, starting from the source, through points of value-added processing, and to local cooperative applicators.
AMES, Iowa 鈥� Many Iowa State University students studying agribusiness have seen a harvest hauled to market. Far fewer have witnessed what happens next.
鈥淓ven if you鈥檙e familiar with the business side of farming, it鈥檚 not apparent where crops go. You dump a load at the local co-op elevator, and it鈥檚 just gone. But it鈥檚 not just marketing. Grain physically needs to go somewhere,鈥� said Bobby Martens, associate professor of economics and the Iowa Institute of Cooperatives Endowed Economics Professor.
A group of Iowa State students recently got a firsthand look at the path soybeans can take after they leave the elevator as part of an experiential course studying agricultural supply chains, a class centered in its inaugural year around a weeklong trip that stretched from processing and fuel plants in Iowa and Minnesota to ports in the Pacific Northwest.
