Travis Brunner recognized by Cargill
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
Travis Brunner of Kearney, Neb., has been recognized for his work in helping farm customers prosper. He is a farm-marketing specialist at a Cargill AgHorizons grain elevator at Gibbon, Neb.
Brunner is the son of Jesse and Rita Brunner of Tampa. He graduated in 1995 from a high school in St. Louis, Mo., prior to his parents' move to Tampa.
During his junior and senior years, he worked at a 200-head dairy farm and found out that he enjoyed working in agriculture.
"My marketing teacher in high school said a kid from the city couldn't make it in agriculture," he said, "but I took it as a challenge."
He also learned about agriculture from his grandparents, Leo and Margaret Jirak, and his uncles, who were farmers.
He graduated from Fort Hays State University in 1999 with a bachelor of science degree in agricultural business.
During summers and school breaks, he worked at Agri-Producers at Tampa. While unloading trucks for farmers and delivering fertilizer to them, he learned about their concerns.
He worked as a farm marketer at an elevator at Wakeeney for two and one-half years before taking the job in Nebraska. He works one-on-one with 75-85 farmers to assist them in developing marketing plans for their corn and soybeans.
He was among almost two dozen farm-marketing specialists honored for superior customer service and sales at Cargill AgHorizons' national sales conference Aug. 4-6 in Minneapolis, Minn. Brunner said selections were made based on surveys of farmer clientele.
Dan Dye, president of Cargill Ag Horizons, described Brunner and other winners as having the "ability to listen well to customers, then effectively execute and deliver on solutions that are tailored to customers' expressed needs."
Brunner attributes his success to those early hands-on experiences he had in agriculture.
Cargill AgHorizons is a branch of Cargill, Inc., an international marketer, processor, and distributor of agricultural, food, financial, and industrial products and services. The corporation has 98,000 employees in 61 countries.
