Exclusive: Meet Dr. Mariana Boscato Menegat

Welcome to "Coffee in the Barn" - A Sip of Inspiration for Women in Agribusiness 

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Join us as Casey and Morgan, alongside special guest Mariana, a distinguished swine nutritionist from Holden Farms, delve into the intricacies of life, career, and the vibrant tapestry of agriculture. From the picturesque vineyards of Brazil to the cutting-edge swine production in the U.S., Mariana shares her journey, insights, and the familial bonds that define the spirit of agribusiness.

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Transcript

Morgan
 0:00:00
 Welcome to this week's episode of Coffee in the Barn. This week we're going to be mixing it up a little bit and showcasing some exclusive content behind the scenes with our speakers. The whole idea behind Coffee in the Barn is a passion project hopefully turning into an awesome nonprofit for women in agribusiness. Your support would mean a lot as we get started. I'm going to go towards the production costs of the podcast. You can help support us by only $3 a month. Subscribers gain exclusive access to in-depth content, personal development tips, and an insider's view on navigating the complexities of life and career with expertise and empathy.
 This episode is just a snapshot of some of the content that will be available through this monthly subscription. With that, let's dig into this week's episode and we thank you all for listening. Well, welcome to this week's episode of Coffee in the Barn with Casey and Morgan.
 And today we have a special guest with us, Mariana. 

Mariana

Thank you so much for having me.

Morgan
 0:01:03
 Of course. Mariana is a swine nutritionist with Holden Farms. Could you just introduce yourself to the audience? Tell us a little bit about where you're from, your background, how you got kind of where you are today. 

Mariana

Yeah, I'll be happy to do that. Happy to be here and now sharing with two moms, sharing this moment with two moms, and that's kind of where my life is today. But professionally, everything started back home. I grew up in a small town in south of Brazil. It was very agricultural dense area, even though my parents were not directly involved in agriculture. I had a lot of exposure.

 0:01:49
 People we know, just the landscape, family production, a small scale, a lot of diversified farming. You would go to a farm, and it was very common to see their family there working, dairy cows, some pigs, definitely chickens and then the crops were very, very diversified. But the one thing that was really beautiful about my hometown and still is, is just the wine production. It's one of the biggest wine production areas in Brazil.

 0:02:24
 So just the vineyards, the wineries, and people involved in that part of agriculture just made up for a very beautiful landscape too. So that's how I grew up around agriculture, but pig production was not really big where I was from. So I got in contact with pig production when I went to vet school. And I wasn't really sure what would be my career pathway when I started that school. So I was really hoping to get exposure to different internships, just different experiences. And that's how I got into the Swine Group.

 0:03:04
 They had a very well-known, very well-respected Swine Group with undergrads and graduate students working together with their mentors, their advisors, and in contact with commercial production to really do research for production. It was management, health, and reproduction-based, and they would just do whatever the industry needed. And as soon as I started there as an undergrad, I got in contact with all the research. They were very welcoming.

 0:03:39
 They started teaching me pretty much everything I needed to know. And I think this is a beautiful feature of the swine industry, is they just welcome you regardless of your background, your experience with pig production. I had none of that. And just they started from the basics. And I could see the research they were doing there, and I was helping, to just impact the producers.

 0:04:07
 They would take that, they would take that data-driven, research-driven, economically-driven information and apply. And I could see that I could make an impact in the industry if I stayed in that path. So that's how, I guess, I decided to stay in swine production, because of how welcoming they were, how nice the industry was, and it still is to this day. So that's how I stayed there for my master's in swine reproduction. I did that for two years under Dr. Bertolozzo. So it was a repro-based program. And at the same time, my husband, my boyfriend at the time, was doing his master's in poultry nutrition.

 0:04:52
 So before we finished, we decided we wanted to apply for a doctorate program in the US. So we were both incredibly lucky to have been accepted both at the same time for a PhD in swine nutrition at Kansas State. So we started together, we finished together, and to me, it was just like a massive learning curve, very fascinating industry, learning about nutrition that was not very big during my master's. They focus in other areas of swine and non-nutrition specifically. So I went from being a vet to repro to nutrition and I guess my own pathway showed me that I should never say never because you never know the opportunities and what's going to be in front of you and where that's going to lead you. And that's where I am today because of that. You know, that led me to being today a swine nutritionist with Holden Farm, which is a very, very great company with family-owned people, you know, just being able to connect with them in a personal level and oversee the nutrition for their 72,000 sows and then all the downstream production has been really great for me.

 0:06:09
 And my husband is also a swine nutritionist, so we have that. Oh, I don't know who he is. Yeah, you don't know him, right? No, not at all. So he works with Hubbard Feeds and That is a really nice connection we have. Together we have our son, Oliver, that ties into the mom conversation. He's two years old and been really fun going into that journey.

Morgan
 0:06:37
 I think last time Henrique and I were together, he showed me a picture of him just eating a green pepper bowl. He really likes his vegetables. I was like, I wish I could get my three-year-old to eat like he does.

Mariana
 0:06:51
 He was very hungry that time. I was getting dinner ready and everything I would take out of the fridge, he would ask for it. I said, okay, yeah, you can have this. And he was really having a good time eating the pepper.

Casey
 0:07:05
 Well, I can tell you boys will never stop asking that that will continue to grow. And you're like, where are you putting that food my son yeah that is funny I was gonna say I think I met you through your husband even though you guys were both studying swine nutrition at Kansas State and I think I'm like wow a guy who's confident enough to have a wife that's maybe smarter than him I'm like this is a great couple right and the fact that I bad but thank you. And I was just happy to see you know like you said the pieces for you both to come to school together and you both got jobs together and it just all worked out and that couldn't be more happy for both of you and then of course little Oliver I was so excited when you told me the name or posted on Facebook I'm like oh my gosh my nephew's Oliver I love that name. 

Morgan

Yeah, that was one of the names we had picked out for our son as well.

Mariana
 0:08:06
 Really? I did not know that.

Morgan
 0:08:08
 Yeah.

Mariana
 0:08:09
 That's nice. Yeah, we tried to find a name that would work both in Portuguese and English, and the list is very short. So, Oliver was the one that we kind of fell in love with. 

Morgan

How is it pronounced in Portuguese then? Oliver. 

Marian

Oliver? Okay. Very similar just the R is a little bit different instead of ver is ver. That's that would be the only difference but difference but very simple. 

Casey

Yes I've always not been good with the R and twirling. 

Mariana

Oh yeah when I am not in English so that's the it's a hard one very hard one. But yeah, when you look back, and that might be kind of a good advice to you, we look back and we think, well, now everything is perfect, everything lined up perfectly. But when you are there trying to find doctorate programs, trying to find jobs for the two of us, we thought, this is not gonna work. I don't think we're gonna be able to find exactly what we need and things just line up perfectly and you keep working for it and getting contacts and we are very lucky to have a lot of people that helped us to get where we are and we're of course incredibly lucky too. 

Morgan
 0:09:34
 I know I've had some conversations with Enrique when we're at conferences or whatnot. How do you guys handle, because I know you guys are in the US, your family's in Brazil, how do you balance being working parents and not really having family support, but you have to find support elsewhere, like when you're traveling and whatnot?

Mariana
 0:09:53
 Yeah, the traveling part is the hardest one when we both want to be somewhere that requires traveling. So for the big events that we have, like the upcoming Midwest, we have my mother-in-law coming. So she's happy enough to come, you know, venture the winter, even though it doesn't feel terribly cold this time, but she would come in the wintertime and stay with us. And then we would all go together and she would stay with Oliver, and then we would attend the conference.

Mariana
 0:10:25
 But then during the week, we just try to, you know, if I have to be at a Sow Farm very early, then he would just stay in and not leave after, you know, just after he drops him off at daycare. I just, me trying not to be, hardly ever I have to be away for the night, but then when he has to be away, then I'll be home. So during the week is really not bad. It will be just a few conferences that we have to plan ahead, basically. But so far it's been working. 

Morgan

That's nice that your Mother-in-law can come and help. 

Mariana

Oh my gosh, yeah. It's such a good help. We'll see this time because last time Oliver was little, so it was not a lot of work, but now he's pretty active. He'll run around and ask a hundred questions to her. It's harder to keep him contained in a hotel room. I just want to run. 

Morgan

I was going to say, is he coming to the hotel room this year?

2
 0:11:22
 So we're going to see, it will probably bring him to be around people if he's comfortable, you know, not be inside the talks, of course, but maybe just let him go around the conference and explore a little bit. So if you see a blonde guy running around, that's Oliver. 

Morgan

All right, well we're gonna have to snag some photos of all of us together because that would be fun. 

Mariana

Yes, that would be fun.

Casey

 I think we need to see more of that at our conferences and you know the coffee in the barn was envisioned out of my Coffee and Careers in Animal Science program and I say if I really want to I think there's support for it, but it's that balance right of how do we handle kids and the whole committee or like, we want child care for when people come to conferences and stuff and going down that path.
 
 

It's very difficult from a liability perspective to host something like that, or have that because you do need a license, even if it's temporary in each state, but more of those scholarships, right, to help working moms like you. Your mother-in-law's got an expensive plane ticket from Brazil to get up here, and then you have an extra hotel room and things like that. So we want to hopefully, as this grows and takes off, you're our first guest. But that's a great example of our goal is to create scholarships for working parents who need that extra support. And I hope to see more little kids running around and I see moms with their babies sometimes in strollers and I'm like, I love this.
 0:12:59
 This is, you know, why am I in agriculture? You were raised around it. Morgan, you know, was part of it around it as well, but I'm in agriculture because I grew up in it, but also the people I met and the interactions I had. And we talk about all these kids leaving ag and what are we replacing them with? And I think just like taking, show all the cute pictures of taking our kids to the farm and with the pigs that we need to have cute pictures of taking our kids to these meetings and interacting to see what we do, that it's not just all on the farm, but there's a lot of other opportunities. And I don't think we do enough of that. So hopefully Mr. Oliver will be running around and I can't wait to meet him. 

Morgan

Yeah and I think Mariana you kind of hit it on the head when we when you talked about how you grew up with the family dynamics of the family values incorporated in ag and that's kind of what drew you to the industry and I can really resonate with that because that's I didn't grow up with animals. I grew up around agriculture, friends' farms, but my family values that I grew up with very much resonated and echoed what I saw within the agricultural world. That was the best way I could see incorporating my home values with my work values was having a career in agriculture.

Mariana
 0:14:20
 That is so true because both my parents have their own business. And my mom, she still to this day, so it's been 35 years that she has her own pharmacy. So she is a nurse, and she opens this pharmacy when there was no pharmacy in this very little town, right? And it's 90% agriculture, a lot of Italian descent. And since I was little, and since to this day, 35 years, she opened her pharmacy Sunday morning.
 0:14:56
 Every Sunday morning, she's there, 8 to noon, and that's the busiest day for her. It took me a while to realize why she was working Sunday morning, when no one else was working Sunday morning. It was because that was the day that they had the time to go to the city, the time to go to the church. And that's when they didn't have all the farm work to do. They still had it in the afternoon, I'm sure.
 0:15:23
 But that was her way of being there for the community because that was their day. 100% of their time they were at the farm, right? So that's how I realized, yes, this is a community centered around farming.

Morang
 0:15:39
 Well, that's awesome.

Casey

0:15:40
 I think it goes back to your childhood and, you know, my childhood very similar. You know, my dad would give his employees a Saturday or Sunday off. And so that was the time I got to go to work with my dad and ride around in the feed truck or go check sows. And those values instill that I think people don't realize no matter what the size of operation is a lot of times to the person's detriment or the farmer's detriment the animals come first. And you know in our world we talk about work-life balance and I have a hard time complaining about that I work six days a week when I'm saying, oh, my gosh, I'm calling you, you're on vacation. I can wait until next week. Enjoy Mexico, right?
 0:16:32
 And so that's kind of my work ethic, even though I'm not on the farm every day, my mindset is to put the animals and the people first.

Morgan
 0:16:40
 I have one – do we have enough time? I have one more question.

Casey
 0:16:43
 Yeah, one more question.

Morgan
 0:16:44
 I was going to say, I was hoping you did. I would just like to kind of follow up with, so being that you have been able to work in two different cultures, Brazil and the U.S., how do you see, what are some differences, what are some similarities between swine production or agriculture production in general between Brazil and the U.S.?

Mariana
 0:17:04
 That's a good one. Well, first, I want to say that in pig production, at least, in Brazil, they look up to the US a lot. Like a lot of the technologies, the things that we do here, they wanna try to implement in Brazil. The biggest challenge is just the cost of the technologies in Brazil. Some of them are just completely out of reach to implement. But then in another sense, we do have a lot more labor, and then we can afford the labor.
 0:17:43
 That here would be a little bit more difficult, and maybe you have more technologies available, but then more challenges finding labor to stay at the farms. And in Brazil, we would have that a little bit more abundant. I think the farms are different because of the climate. It's just we don't have climate control buildings in Brazil very hardly. It is changing, especially in some of the very hot areas in Brazil. It is changing, so new buildings are going to look more like our buildings here, but in general, in a lot of the systems that I've been they are just curtain-sided even you know sows the fairing everything is curtain-sided so that is different the The work ethics and the culture they are very similar. I think people People were moved by the same things, you know, the production doing the best for the pigs. Do you? Do you want to learn things? different you wanna try things, you know, try products and try a different method. And if you, I remember going there and just asking questions and it's the same response as you'd get here, you know, they're happy that you're there, that you wanna help. So that is very, very similar. They probably talk a little bit more in Brazil. People are more talkative. I'm sure they're gonna, you know, show you everyone in the forum and their family and their kids, and they're inviting you for dinner and all of that, you know. But that's just the way Brazilians are. In terms of production, I think that kind of summarizes it. The Brazilians really look up to Americans in some of the technologies, We keep improving kind of in the same areas that you guys are improving or Americans are.

Morgan
 0:19:41
 I know there's probably some similar health challenges between Brazil and the U.S., but how do you guys handle like biosecurity in Brazil? Is it more of a, is it shower in, shower out? Is it more just of a bench transition? What does that look like on the facilities?

Mariana
 0:20:01
 Yeah. Well, Brazilians are very fortunate to not have PRRS and PEDV. 

Morgan

That is amazing. 

Mariana

And that is because of all the biosecurity work that the government and the genetic companies have done in bringing animals and genetic into the country. So they do keep animals in an island for quarantine period, in the test bed until they can be brought into the country. And the farms, they're very similar in terms of biosecurity than here, shower in and change of clothes and everything. But one thing that I always found really good in Brazil, and it's kind of impossible to do it here, we would have the cars would go through disinfecting, disinfectant arch. So you go in and then it sprays your car with disinfectant or sometimes it's soap and then disinfectant. So you also when your car is coming into the farm area, it would go through that. It's kind of impossible to do here just because of the weather, I guess, but that was something different in Brazil.

Morgan
 0:21:17
 Oh, that's very interesting. I know at the facility I used to work at, we just used to, you know, spray off the tires with disinfectant, but when you're traveling... Besides the tires sitting on the ground. Yeah, besides the tires sitting on the ground, during the winter you have all the snow and salt and things that get picked up and held underneath the bottom side of the car. So if we could implement a car wash before we went on a farm, I think that would save us a lot of disease transmission issues, especially with feed trucks.

Mariana

 Right. And then because Brazil does not have those two viral diseases, a lot of the effort are focusing on bacterial diseases. So also, you know, gilt introduction, you know, making sure they don't carry a different strain of a bacteria or something. 

Casey

That is very important, too. I was going to throw in one last question. I know Morgan had that one. I thought that was a really good one. But from a career perspective, how do you feel moving to the US has benefited your career? And do you see yourself going back or are you found home here?

Mariana
 0:22:31
 Yeah, it is a different career path here in Brazil. In Brazil we do have a lot more veterinarians, we have a lot more colleges of veterinary in Brazil, so we do have a lot of veterinarians doing positions that for us here would be maybe animal scientists or even people that just work in the field that don't have a higher education, we would have a lot of veterinarians doing that job and then some of them would just kind of keep growing within companies thinking about a production system, you know, be in charge of health and then be in charge of management and leading a team and so on and so forth. So that's kind of how the path would be for me in Brazil, I guess. I would start like probably as a service person and then keep going within the company. I'm not sure how it would be like for me. I think I do see a lot of opportunities here. And maybe because I have been here for so long, I'm a little disconnected to, you know, what the opportunities would be now there, but they would have other, you know, the allied industries that could work on or genetic companies. So the structure of the industries is similar in that sense, except when you're a veterinarian, it would It would just be we would have more opportunities in very various levels of production and then you kind of grow where it's here. If you're a veterinarian, then you work as a veterinarian, right?
 0:24:13
 I'm very happy in working here. So I think for now, that's definitely the path we would like to be on. Just staying here has been working very well for us. We really like it here. 

Casey

Well, we're really happy to have you here.

Morgan

 Yes.

Mariana
 0:24:29
 Yes. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. Henrique can't leave. 

Mariana

No, not his decision anymore.

Morgan
 0:24:35
 We know, we know who wears the pants in the house.

Casey
 0:24:38
 Yes, Mr. Oliver.

Mariana
 0:24:39
 That would be very true, yes.

Morgan
 0:24:41
 Well, thank you so much.

 0:24:43
 This was fun.

Mariana
 0:24:44
 Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, and I had a lot of fun.

Casey

0:24:48
 Have a good rest of your week.

Morgan
 0:24:50
 And thanks, everyone, for listening.

Tune in next week, where we will be joined by two dairy calf specialists,

Dr. Ellen DeFore with Hubbard Feeds and Dr. Bethany Dado with Vita Plus. They're both going to help break down the power of colostrum for humans and animals.

Casey
 0:25:08
 You're not going to want to miss it. You're not going to want to miss