Jacy Castlebury, Western Illinois University

Hello All,
My name is Jacy Castlebury and I am a junior at Western Illinois University studying Ag Business with a minor in Economics. Over the past two summers, I have interned with Dearwester Grain Services, a grain elevator and feed mill based out of Golden, IL. While I was there, I was able to gain a lot of knowledge and hands on experience about both the grain and feed industries. My favorite part about working at Dearwester Grain was learning about the grain markets and how the futures and basis work. In my future, I want to pursue a career in grain merchandising, and this internship helped me to learn a lot of the important basics, like basis trading and contracting.
 This year, I was chosen as one of the 2020 GFAI Scholarship recipients. I am extremely grateful for the GFAI and the scholarship that they have provided me with to support my education. Along with the scholarship, I have had the opportunity to job shadow at Western Grain Marketing in Adair, IL. I was very impressed with how nice this facility was and how smoothly it was ran. After spending some time in the office, we took a tour outside. The morning that I was there, they were loading a rail car. I thought this was the most interesting thing that I had seen there, because I had never seen a rail car being loaded before. I was even able to go up to the top of the stairs and see how they loaded it from up above. Overall, it was a great day and I learned a lot from it. I appreciate Scott Sims and the rest of the crew at WGM in Adair for having me and taking the time during the middle of harvest to show me what they do!