By Joe Kertzman, managing editor, Badger Common’Tater
That good old Midwest work ethic is evident, one realizes, when talking to someone like Tim Schrank, technical sales representative for Nichino America, Inc., of Wilmington, Delaware.
Covering the Great Lakes region, Tim, who hails from Naperville, Illinois, but has lived in Michigan for almost a decade, currently in St. John’s, has been working in agriculture for the better part of nine years now.
“My first role in agriculture was working at Hop Head Farms as an intern,” he notes. “I was looking for a job where I could work as many hours as possible so that I didn’t have to work during college, because I wanted to concentrate on my studies and on cross-country and track and field.”
“You can do that on a farm—there’s always something to work on. I thought that was the greatest job experience I’d ever had up to that point,” he says, “doing everything from small equipment maintenance to driving tractors, irrigation installation, and learning as much as I could in a hands-on way. It was a lot of fun!”
In his current position, Schrank works for Nichino America Inc. and its parent company, Nihon Nohyaku Company, based in Japan. Being established in 1928, it is Japan’s first and oldest agrochemical manufacturing company.
That’s a far cry from growing up in a Chicago suburb and working on his family’s hobby farm in Southwest Michigan where his family had “an acre of blueberries and a row of hops for home brews.”
“My favorite part of working for Nichino is traveling across the country, all the people I get to meet and just learning from them,” he says. “What’s cool about my position is that I get to work with university extension researchers and assistants, scientists, growers, crop consultants, and sales reps, people from all walks of life.”
