Meet The 2024 Interns: Paige Kastner, Eastern Region Intern

My name is Paige Kastner and I am from the area of Kiron, Iowa. I will be a senior in the fall at Iowa State University studying Agronomy and Seed Science. I am the Eastern Region intern for the summer! I am very excited to be with Hoegemeyer this summer as this company means a lot to my family.

In just my first couple of weeks working for Hoegemeyer, I’ve have the pleasure to meet and observe many of the DSM thus far, along with many dealers. When they say Hoegemeyer is one big family, they are not kidding. I have gotten to help with returns, breaking down of hard boxes, and even be out in the field doing stand counts and agronomic work with the agronomist. The company would not function without the dealers and customers, so it has been a joy to go out and meet these people and help out when needed.

With being a senior, I’ve taken many classes and learned many things. It is awesome for me when something I have learned in class correlates with being in the real world, being in real fields, looking at real crops. For example, we have always learned that one coleoptile appears from one corn seed each. While this is the situation for 99.9% of seeds, while out in the field with Eric, the Eastern Region Agronomist, we found a corn seed that had not only one coleoptile, but two! It was awesome to see something so rare.

Another example being of sidewall compaction. I have learned about it in many classes and have seen it in person before, but just the correlation of seeing something in front of you after hearing in many lectures what causes it, issues from it, how to prevent, etc, and the connection of knowledge with first hand seeing it is just incredible for me.

I’m excited to see what else I will get to experience and learn and who else I will be able to meet the rest of the summer!