le sueur

If you’d asked Mueller and Prevot in 1990, Will you ever see the day when you’ll have to turn away business because of a labor shortage? they would have answered, Never.

Yet today 550-employee strong LeSueur Incorporated sits with land in Le Sueur ready for expansion, cash waiting, booming sales, so many potential customers you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, yet it can’t expand because workers are in such short supply.

It sounds like a fairy tale, but once upon a time creameries discarded whey and buttermilk, giving it to farmers who spread it on fields or fed it to calves.

Now an entire industry exists to capture the nutritious ingredients locked in these once-snubbed fluids. One of the leaders in that industry is Davisco Foods International, Inc., based in Le Sueur, where veteran employees still remember the days of whey-splattered fields and calves suckled on buttermilk.

Sixty percent of American workers say they lack adequate training to properly do their jobs.

That can be fixed, according to Bill Russell and Jeanne T. Doheny. They train employees of companies in which you’d feel comfortable owning stock, companies all the way from Minneapolis to the Pacific Rim, even some companies whose names you might not recognize.