My internship with CHS Hedging

This summer, I interned at CHS Hedging in Inver Grove Heights, MN. At CHS, I worked at the order desk. My responsibilities were to talk with farmers and grain elevators about buying or selling orders for the commodity markets. I thought this aspect was very interesting. I was able to talk to farmers from varying backgrounds. Some farmed only crops while others farm cattle or hogs. There were also speculators who would buy and sell anything they thought they could make a profit off of. My hours that I worked were Monday through Thursday from 12-9pm and then on Sunday from 4-9pm. For me these hours worked perfectly but there was also an option to work from 8am-2pm.

Most of the opportunities that I was given were by the market analysts at CHS. One of analysts tasked me with finding data on past years trends for corn and beans after the September WASDE reports came out. He was trying to understand if the markets have become more volatile in the day that the WASDE reports are released. Another opportunity that I had was to enter data for CHS projections based off of the USDA projected inventories and totals. The last significant project that I worked on was related to the breakout of the African Swine Flu in China and general information about the disease. I created a presentation that was shared with the analysts and then sent out to their clients.

Overall, this was a great experience for me. It helped me understand what I’d like to do in the future for my career. Working at CHS was a good way to get my foot in the door for a future in that area. I was given the opportunity to work on projects and collaborate with the analysts in doing so. The hedging analysts were always open to questions and if I needed to ask for help they were always willing to assist me.