A businessman in Oregon is considering a new job. He is connected to this potential position by a recruiter based halfway across the continent. That recruiter is the founder of an executive placement company that serves clients across the nation… from rural Kansas.
Mike Smith is the founder and chairman of Ag 1 Source, a national agricultural recruiting company. Smith grew up on a farm near Long Island, Kansas. He commuted to Norton High School because of its outstanding agricultural education and FFA program. He says his ag teacher and FFA advisor, Bob Broeckelman, had a lifelong impact on him.
Smith went to Kansas State University where he met his wife and returned to the farm, but this was during the farm crisis of the 1980s. He took an opportunity to work for Collingwood Grain in southwest Kansas.
“It was a great decision,” Smith said. He enjoyed agribusiness and rose through the ranks of the company.
