CNHI celebrates 25th Anniversary of Patriot sprayer

Last Friday afternoon CNHI celebrated the 25th anniversary of the production of the Patriot sprayer with employees past and present, members of the Benson area business community, city leaders, and U.S. 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Detroit Lakes.
CNHI is one of the premier manufacturing plants in Minnesota, Peterson told the crowd of nearly 200 people.
One of the reasons manufacturing plants are so successful in western Minnesota is the people they have working for them, he said. There are a lot of farm kids who have gone to work for manufacturers like Case who have worked hard on the farm and bring a good work ethic with them. They also have a lot of knowledge about how things work because they have been around machinery on the farm, he said.
Peterson also told the crowd that farming has come a long ways since the the days when he was growing up in rural Minnesota. When he was sitting on the seat of a tractor going through a field there not only wasn’t a cab on it, there wasn’t even an umbrella. “Now they have air conditioned cabs and drive themselves,” he said.
However, while Peterson was in Benson to celebrate with CNHI on the Patriot sprayer’s 25th birthday, he turned serious as he talked about the need to find employees to fill openings in rural Minnesota.
He said he was hearing a lot of manufacturers tell him they can’t find enough employees. When he was first elected, that was not the case, he said....
 
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Pictured: An oringal Patriot sprayer sits next to the modern version in front of the CNHI plant on west U.S. Highway 12 in Benson.