Grade 8 students with Fran Burr, who gave a career awareness presentation in February 2020.

CAREER TALK WITH FRAN BURR

By Jozi, Grade 8

When I think of farming, I'd usually groan with boredom. I'd think of men wearing oversized overalls, picking tomatoes, and driving their big green tractors. A snooze fest of a job, if you ask someone like me. At least, that's what I thought before my experience with Fran Burr during a Grade 8 career awareness session.

Fran Burr, an experienced worker in the agri-foods industry, grew up with the city life, without any real exposure to agriculture whatsoever. From a young age, Ms Burr always had a fascination with plants and where our food came from. After high school, she ventured on to University of Manitoba, where she acquired a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. In her work career, Ms Burr has worked in agriculture marketing, communications, agronomy, business leadership, and even started her own consulting business.

In her presentation, she talked to us about the different sectors of working in agriculture and how it isn't all about the stereotypical farmer. Food production, business, communications, animal care, engineering, science, and finance are all important aspects of agriculture, vital for its survival. As for actual farming, she explained how technologically advanced most farming machines are from self-driving tractors to huge monitors inside grain elevators. You also don't need to have any interest at all in plants or crops in order to work in agriculture. Ms Burr told us that professions such as animal care and communications have nothing to do with plants at all! For animal care, the name pretty much sums itself up. Grain trading or merchandising is the area of agri-business where potential crop-buyers are put in contact with crop-sellers in order to find the best matches.

Ms Burr's presentation was one that had me fascinated. Who knew that agriculture had such a vast range of jobs, each with a very important and specific role? I sure didn't. Hopefully, you now know something a little more about the agriculture business, as well!
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Balmoral Hall School

630 Westminster Ave. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada  R3C 3S1
Tel: (204) 784-1600 | Fax: (204) 774-5534 | info@balmoralhall.ca
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Our mission at Balmoral Hall School is to inspire girls’ imagination and the courage to excel, to reach, to lead, to care.

We are a nondenominational independent day and boarding school, educating students from Junior Nursery to Grade 12.