New Leaders Named to Cargill's Pork Animal Nutrition Team
Nearly 80 years of pork industry experience in key leadership positions will be added to the Cargill Animal Nutrition pork team. On Feb. 1, Cargill Animal Nutrition announced Patrick Duerksen as its new pork commercial director. Brent Frederick, PhD, has been named technical services and innovation director and Scott McAdoo is director of pork business analysis and support.
Duerksen has been working with Cargill and in the pork industry for nearly 30 years, the company said in a release. He first joined Cargill as a production manager for the pork business, managing hog barns in Arkansas. Since then, he has worked in technology deployment, business analytics and business efficiency in both the U.S. and abroad. For the last 13 years, Duerksen has led strategic marketing for the animal nutrition business, first at the global level, then focused on the North American market. In his new role, Duerksen will lead the pork sales and nutrition consultants, helping them uncover opportunities with customers to drive profitability and success of their operations, the company added.
“The deep passion and commitment that our team has for supporting our customers is what really excites me about leading this team,” Duerksen said in a release. “I’m honored to take this role to bring more impactful insights and solutions to the pork industry and to help grow and develop our team.”
Frederick has worked with pigs since he was a young boy on his family’s 100-sow, farrow-to-finish farm in Georgia, where he also showed pigs, cattle and sheep. That farm upbringing led him to study animal science at Texas A&M University, then pursue a master’s in animal nutrition from Iowa State University and receive his PhD in nutrition from North Carolina State University. He worked for Christensen Farms for 17 years, holding several different roles during that time, including business analyst, sow operations lead and director of R&D and innovation. In 2020, he joined Cargill as the pork innovation lead, and began working across pork and poultry innovation last year as the monogastric innovation lead, the company said in a release. He will now lead both the research and innovation team and in-field technical experts for the pork business.
McAdoo joined Cargill in late 2022, bringing nearly 30 years of pork industry experience with him. Like Duerksen, he began his career in the 1990s with Cargill Pork as the operations manager for sow production, growing the sow herd to more than 140,000. McAdoo followed the pigs to JBS Live Pork when Cargill sold the live pork business in 2015. McAdoo transitioned to the world of analytics as an account manager with Agristats Live Pork before getting back into live production as the director of operations for Tyson’s pork breeding stock business. McAdoo’s experience leading large integrated operations as well as his experience managing data make him a great asset to support customer profitability, the company said in a release. He will also lead Cargill's team of live production support specialists.
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