When Mike de Schaaf, the farm manager at Michigan State University’s Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center, heard about a worker whom a local grower recommended for a position at the farm, he didn’t have a chance to call the candidate before meeting him.
“Before I had a chance to call Cade back, he came through the door and said, ‘Hi, I’m here looking for a job,’” de Schaaf said. “I really appreciated his initiative to seek out this opportunity.”
As it turned out, Cade Krieger, who originally grew his passion for agriculture through the National FFA Organization, already had a connection at the Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center. He was enrolled in a prior Zoom class on vegetable production taught by Ben Phillips, a vegetable crops educator with Michigan State University-Extension who’s based at the center.
Phillips said, “When Cade began working at SWMREC, he said he was in my class, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ At that point, it had to have been about two years.”
Krieger uses a wheelchair, and as he prepared for his first day at the Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center, he was joined by Ned Stoller, an agricultural engineer and assistive technology specialist with AgrAbility.
Implemented in the 1990 Farm Bill and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, AgrAbility is a program whose mission is “to enhance the quality of life for farmers, ranchers and other agricultural workers with disabilities, so that they, their families and their communities continue to succeed in rural America.” The program consists of the National AgrAbility Project and State/Regional AgrAbility Projects, with Michigan State University leading Michigan’s project — one of 21 U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded State/Regional AgrAbility Projects.
Krieger and Stoller established a relationship before coming to the Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center because Stoller developed assistive technology Krieger used for previous farm jobs. Collaborating with the Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center team, they identified tasks Krieger could immediately contribute to at the Michigan State University AgBioResearch center using technology he already had.
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