The Agrarian's Alcove

Did you know that elevator buckets touch everybody’s life? Okay, I know at least half of you are like what even is an elevator bucket? And even if you do know what it is, you are probably wondering how it reaches you. Tuesday in class, I got the incredible chance to meet Paul Phillips, president of Maxi-Lift, Inc. Maxi-Lift is an awesome company that started from scratch. They are family owned and privately held. They have had significant growth in the past 15 years and have incurred no debt! They are what business pro’s would call a PRMG company. They are a company where you would never have to worry about your job (if you’re doing the right thing of course). Maxi-Lift produces elevator buckets. Elevator buckets are these heavy duty, plastic buckets that attach to grain elevators. Grain elevators are used in agricultural and industrial settings and they are used to move product. Product is poured into a bin, which pours into a vertical conveyer belt that has buckets attached. ...

I am so, so excited to share something new with you all today! I normally focus on animal agriculture and today I am talking about potaoes! If you don’t already know, I am a major in the College of Ag at Texas A&M University. And we ‘agvocate’ as much as we can. This semester I am taking an Agribusiness class and have the greatest professor ever! This last week he brought in John Pope and intern, Jack Harris from a potato company to talk to us. I was beyond impressed. I went up to Mr. Pope after his presentation and asked him if it was okay to do a blog post on their company. He was totally cool with it, so I am here to share with you the most awesome potato facts you’ve ever heard! MountainKing Potatoes are the current Potato Pioneers. They are making some huge efforts to make the potato industry a little more palatable to consumers. MountanKing knows that our generation cooks and prepares potatoes a lot differently than any previous generation. In the past, big family meals...

This is the last post in the Savvy Shopper series! This post has taken me awhile to write, mainly because it is hard to find unbiased facts about this specific topic. Today I am going to be discussing food from free range animals. This is a seriously growing trend with all the animal rights activists, and animal welfare . I’m going to start by defining free range, and then I’m going to try something new. I want to compare the cold-hard facts about free range animals to an article written by PETA. Saying PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is like a saying a really bad word to people in my industry. For those who don’t know, PETA really wants everyone to become a vegan. They’ve had several law suits against them, and they make law suits against several individuals and companies every year. PETA believes that animals are being enslaved to humans and don’t want people to own pets. Okay, there’s your background on PETA; with that said I am going to try my very hardest to pr...