2020 SUMMER INTERNS: Burger Lambrechts

My name is Burger Lambrechts. I will be starting my senior year at UNL studying Mechanized Systems Management and competing for the Husker track and field team. I am from South Africa, and I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I have a big passion for agriculture. I am an agronomy intern at the Harvard location, working with and learning from Kenny Sandell and Derek Bailey.

When I started my internship, I knew I had a lot to learn and I was excited to do so. Even though I have worked on farms in the past, my knowledge around agriculture in Nebraska was only what I have been able to learn in college classes. Right away Kenny and Derek started showing me how to use the scouting app and how to scout fields. I have slowly but surely built up my scouting skills, and I am learning more every week.

We started out doing stand counts and emergence reporting. As the crop keeps growing each week, new things need to be reported on and I get to learn something new with each growth stages. Most recently, I have been learning how to probe the soil and estimate the moisture content in order to provide irrigation scheduling. We also recently started looking for and finding root worms in our area. I have also been doing flag testing and tissue sampling each week. Once I got the hang of it, I have been doing the tissue and soil sampling mostly on my own and then delivering it to the head office. It’s a small job, but I get to be a part of the process.

One of the biggest things I have learned is that the Aurora Coop is more than just a business. I learned this early on when I was out scouting with Kenny and we came across an older farmer who had problems with his disc and was struggling to fix it. Kenny was running late on some things, but rather than getting to our own business we stopped and helped. This is when I learned what the Coop stood for and not just what it did.

I look forward to the rest of the summer and I am proud to have my internship here.