Many people see the name Land O’Lakes, Inc. and recognize it as the butter company. But what they don’t know is that Land O’Lakes is so much more than that.
This summer I interned for Land O’Lakes in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a communications intern for the multiple Land O’Lakes entities: Purina Livestock Nutrition, WinField United and Land O’Lakes Dairy Foods.
Land O’Lakes is a national, enterprise cooperative made up of smaller, regional or local cooperatives. The member cooperatives can either be dairy or crop cooperatives, or both. Cooperatives makes up the enterprise of Land O’Lakes that includes a farm to fork view.
Throughout the summer, I had opportunities to work with producers all over the U.S. and write articles for the Land O’Lakes member news website and intranet along with completing a summer-long project.
The communications team at Land O’Lakes is made up of smaller teams, each having a particular communications focus. This summer, I focused on member and governance communications.
The Land O’Lakes member news site is updated with stories almost daily. Over the summer, I wrote more than 10 articles that were published on the news site and internally through Land O’Lakes’ intranet. My favorite article I wrote was about two Kansas producers who attended a conference in D.C. representing Land O’Lakes.
I also wrote direct member communications for our governance department. This included information from new board member elections to new regulations passed through legislation. I also got to design a campaign surrounding leader elections. This included a new look and new messaging.
This summer, main project was developing the communications plan and media for the Best Talent Survey. A survey taken every two years and used to benchmark the Land O’Lakes workplace environment and how employee feel about their team and job.
Overall, I really enjoyed getting to learn about the differences between a regional and national co-op and my summer projects. Land O’Lakes provided me with the opportunity to improve my writing and editing skills. Additionally, being able to develop and work through a communications plan will be an important skill for my future career.
Land O’Lakes has a ton of opportunities for interns. From working in the field to working in the corporate office, students have many options for internships. To find out more about their opportunities, visit the Land O’Lakes website landolakesinc.com. In addition, Land O’Lakes has expanded their Global Food Challenge to include Kansas State University. The Global Food Challenge is open to all sophomores, regardless of major and provides students with a summer learning about global agriculture and trips throughout the U.S. and to South Africa. For more information visit foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com or contact me.