#40 – Kevin Sanders (USMC/Army National Guard) -Seaboard Foods

This is the final episode in our series with military veterans at Seaboard Foods. Our guest this week is Kevin Sanders – Environmental Compliance and Maintenance Manager for Seaboard Foods in Iowa. In this capacity, Kevin is responsible for providing environmental compliance support for Seaboards’ operations in Iowa as well as Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Colorado.

Kevin grew up on a farm in West Central, Missouri. One of five with three brothers, his Mom often dispatched the three of them across the county as cheap labor baling hay all summer long. It’s not the first time either we’ve had a guest talk about bumping into the Marine recruiter first and then making a decision right then and there to join up. This is exactly what happened to Kevin and he spent the next six years in the Corps in places like Japan as a mechanic.

In this episode, we talk about:

– What it was like for him to stand in front of 100 Marines for the first time at 20 years old

– The idea of giving his employees the ability to own their decisions

– Taping college notes to the steering wheel of the tractor while he was working at the farm to put himself through school

– 20+ year career in environment management in the pork industry

– The roll technology is playing today with fertilizer management

– Why the younger generation is ideally suited to take up this new mantle