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MCW partners with food plant

FAIRMONT — Students taking food science classes at Martin County West recently had the opportunity to see just how they could put their education to use in a career.

Representatives from Fairmont Foods were invited into the classroom to share the real-world application potential of what the kids are learning.

“We’ve created a working relationship between Fairmont Foods and Martin County West’s Food Science classes,” said MCW ag teacher Stephanie Wohlhuter. “The reason this came about is that we realized we have a lot of kids taking these classes in high school, but not a lot of them are entering careers in food sciences, and there’s such a demand for that career area. So we made contact with the company, and they were so excited to help lend their expertise to high school students.

“So we had three representatives from Fairmont foods over here, including Judy Traetow, who’s a vice president. She spoke a little about their company and what they do in Fairmont, and at the Madelia location.

“She also had a flavor specialist come in, and he was very interesting, talking about trends in the food industry and new flavors and ingredients that are going to be really popular in the next five years. The kids had a lot of fun listening to him, and most of the ingredients were things we haven’t even heard of yet in this area.

“The last person they had was a culinologist, who was a graduate of Martin County West many years ago. She went to SMSU in the culinology program, and she works on their new product development.”

Wohlhuter noted that food science is an important part of agriculture, even though it’s not usually the first thing that comes to mind.

“If you think about the food that we produce on the farm as a part of agriculture, those raw commodities have to be processed into something and they look very different by the time they get on our plate,” she said. “Food science is about everything that happens to the food from the time it leaves the farm until we’re eating it.

The school and business hope to expand the relationship in coming years.

“We’re going to have our food science career development event team through the FFA work with some of the product development specialists at Fairmont Foods, so when they go to their competition they have an idea on how to come up with a new food product, make it, and then create a little marketing campaign and present it to executives from a food company,” Wohlhuter said.

She added: “Then, in the spring, I teach a food processing class which is kind of an upper level classes that focuses on the food science industry. So we’re looking at possibly doing some plant tours through that class.”

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