Stine Seed does business with all of the heavyweights and has for more than three decades, primarily because it has something everybody else needs: the best-performing soybean seeds in the business. We and our partners share information on your use of this website to help improve your experience. Normally the ad cost for an Instagram ad post is based on the number of followers on the account. He's flipping around a football. And now, Rastetter is getting up close and personal with the presidential hopefuls in full view of the media and other deep-pocketed donors. "Those things change you. The conventional spacing of corn rows has also largely persisted at 30 inches or more in modern agriculture, with narrower rows in use on less than 5% of corn acres in North America as of 2012, according to rival DuPont Pioneer. With more than 900 patents, Stine sells his coveted soybean and corn seed genetics to agri-giants like Monsanto and Syngenta, nabbing estimated annual sales of more than$1 billion with margins in excess of 10%. Now 35,000 plants and 150 bushels per acre is commonnearly five times the yieldthanks to modern tractors, fertilizers, pesticides and seeds genetically modified to resist insects and herbicides. Mr. Rastetter is the founder and CEO of Summit Agricultural Group, a leading agribusiness and renewable energy firm with operations in North and South America. Normally the ad cost for an Instagram ad post is based on the number of followers on the account. "I got really busy and pretty independent, and I kind of do what I want to do," he said. I understand how folks could look at him that way, he said. ", "It was about Bruce supporting a friend he saw work hard," Sweeney said. ", Later in life, Rastetter supported Sweeney's run for office in the Iowa Legislature against fellow Republican Pat Grassley, grandson of U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who consistently tops polls as Iowa's most popular politician. 4,000), the dozen or so companies under Stines umbrella form an unlikely titan at the heart of the market, directly or indirectly generating revenues from almost 50 million acres of crops in the U.S. each year. It's actually a myth about how to make money on Facebook Bruce L. Rastetter is an American agribusinessman, agricultural entrepreneur, and former president of the Iowa Board of Regents, which governs the state's three public universities. You take good parents, and you make lots of offspring, says Stine, who learned the basics in under an hour from an Iowa State technician. AT CENTER OF THE FIGHT OVER HOG CONFINEMENTS. [1], In 1994, three years after the birth of his first company, he consolidated his feed management, construction, and swine projects into Heartland Pork Enterprises. Hawkeye went on to build two more plants in Menlo and Shell Rock, and Rastetter maintained his management team. Disclamer: Bruce Rastetter net worth displayed here are calculated based on a combination social factors. From media and technology to finance and real estate, leagues and. By 1994, he found himself in New York City, a farm boy walking into Rockefeller Center to talk to investors. It seems like a huge opportunity, he said. You had to be thinking about it before the whole boom even started, and then the market cooled so fast.". If he wanted to make money on land, he said, he had better places to do that. Tad had turned around on a dime, and the accident happened.". Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. If the politicians heading to Iowa to be part of his summit should know anything, it's that he wants them to do their homework. Agribusiness leaders point to Rastetter as the quintessential Iowa farm boy success story, but as hes ascended, hes also become a controversial figure in the state. "We were fortunate on the timing of it. "One of the things that has always been a challenge for Iowa is being accepting of change. [1] Jimmy Buffett. Then theres Stine. "I kept thinking, there's got to be somebody else," Branstad said. Were going to be able to double corn yields very easily, says Stine. Bruce Rastetter net worth 513 Thousand Millions of dollars 75% Net worth score Disclamer: Bruce Rastetter net worth displayed here are calculated based on a combination social factors. He formed a management company and jumped headlong into an idea that had taken hold in North Carolina large-scale hog confinement operations. Type your email address below. His rise to the status of one of the worlds wealthiest people is a direct result of this success. The governor personally called Bush who has not been to Iowa since declaring his intention to mull a 2016 run and also Perry to convince them to attend. "Dollars you contributed help those people get elected, which is what our system is. In early 2015, Rastetter brought a number of 2016 Republican presidential candidates to his Iowa Agriculture Summit for face-to-face public interviews. You work around good people, and it's not work. He also has given money to the University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa, and has an exhibit building named after him after a $1 million contribution to the Iowa State Fair. Bruce Rastetter, a major Republican donor in Iowa, and Kip Tom, a farmer who ran for Congress in Indiana this year but was defeated in the primary, are also among those being considered,. https://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bruce_Rastetter&oldid=8736876, Pages using DynamicPageList3 dplreplace parser function, Conflicts in school board elections, 2021-2022, Special Congressional elections (2023-2024), 2022 Congressional Competitiveness Report, State Executive Competitiveness Report, 2022, State Legislative Competitiveness Report, 2022, Partisanship in 2022 United States local elections, Local knowledge of our professional staff, Surveys of activists, thought leaders and journalists from across the country and political spectrum, Outreach to political journalists in each state who helped refine our lists. Kevin Kimle, who holds ISU's Bruce Rastetter Chair of Agricultural Entrepreneurship, said it would be problem to do outreach to Tanzanians because they would all be shipped away. Bruce Rastetter got $480,000 in loans from ISU Ryan J. Foley Associated Press View Comments 0:05 0:56 The agribusiness owned by Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter was awarded. "The market was right, and he took advantage of it," said Walt Wendland, who founded Golden Grain Energy in Mason City. Heartland Pork is now the fourth largest pork producer in the country. He donated more than $160,000 to Gov. Summit Agricultural Group | All Rights Reserved. The family was poor and the work both long and hardrising at 6 a.m. and finishing at 6 p.m. was the norm, except in summer, when the hours were even longer. Then know this: Rastetter gave $5 million in 2008 toward upgraded Hawkeye football training facilities. [6] In 2015 Rastetter announced the inaugural Iowa Agriculture Summit to address the political initiatives and interests of farmers and agriculture in the state, such as GMO's, nutrition labeling, food waste, and biotechnology. [3], In 2003, Rastetter created Hawkeye Renewables and served as the CEO until 2011. In 1994 the U.S. government granted its first patents on the full genetic makeup of a soybean. Get notification with the latest net worth updates for free. George Clooney. Previously only asexual plants like rosebushes or apple trees could be patented, not self-pollinating crops like corn and soybeans. But the company went through bankruptcy proceedings, and in 2010, the two plants were sold to Flint Hills Resources, owned by Koch Industries. "Regent Rastetter is pushing an agenda of treating Iowa's universities as corporations rather than institutions of higher learning," said Evan Burger, of the U.S. Student Association, an organization that advocates for student issues. By the mid-1970s, under a new company called Midwest Oilseeds, Stine was operating the most widely used soybean genetics company in the U.S., licensing the robust seeds it bred for royalties. The Stine network of 1,700 dealers was selling Stine soybean products in 15 states under 160 brands. Cities | Number one, we contained the manure, and two, we used it as a nutrient (spreading it on fields for fertilizer). So why should he have any greater voice in choosing our elected officials than the regular Joe? | Rastetters hands-on experience in global agricultural and renewable energy sectors, matched with his strong focus on strategic business development, has been key to building successful companies and advising government leaders on policy matters. As founder of Agrisol Energy Corp., Rastetter pursued a deal with the Tanzanian government that would have used Iowa State University's expertise to develop farmland there and, in the original proposal, would have displaced refugees. Stine, the 72-year-old founder and owner of Stine Seed, the largest private seed company in the world, built this tower back in 1987 so he could get a good view of his empire, some 15,000 acres of frozen Iowa farmland. "Oftentimes in this country, if you have success, (people insinuate that) you must not have gotten that in the appropriate way," he said. He is a very caring, sincere individual who doesnt ever forget somebody, he said, noting that Rastetter invites a broad range of people, from folks he went to Sunday school with all the way through the people on Wall Street. Like one of those for your desk? Its an event designed to promote farm policy in a state where pigs outnumber voters 10 to one, but its also a bold display of the political power Rastetter has amassed and a reminder to candidates that his endorsement would be a big get ahead of the Iowa caucuses. He has faced other questions about the ties between businesses under the Summit Group's umbrella and university research on his farm, and about no-interest loans from ISU's Iowa Energy Center for wind turbines. The casewhich held portentous implications for all seed developers, including Stinewent in Monsantos favor, affirming intellectual property rights for plant genetics. Buying more seeds per acre is expensive. Meet Bruce Rastetter, the man behind the Iowa Agriculture Summit, which is drawing 11 presidential hopefuls to Iowa March 7. As he faced that loss, Rastetter was often embroiled in local controversy. That lead was solidified in 2013, when the protections of patented seeds like Roundup Ready withstood a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court. If you really want to be fair here, you need to go get two more [lawyers], he smirked. He used the new riches to give $2.5 million to Iowa State for an office suite and an endowed faculty position, the Bruce Rastetter Chair in Agricultural Entrepreneurship. For Klicker, Rastetter is the poster boy for everything thats wrong with big pork. Who knows if it will last one more time? he chuckles. In 2013, Rastetter was elected president of the Board of Regents. @MarcoBattaglia Pipe scams end when everyone tells Bruce Rastetter that atmospheric C02 is more abundant than water https://t.co/US30lSmktc. Rastetter, 58, can engage deeply on business issues, but rips through his childhood background quickly during an interview. And you sit next to me. var _Hasync=_Hasync||[];_Hasync.push(['Histats.start','1,4553220,4,511,95,18,00000000']);_Hasync.push(['Histats.fasi','1']);_Hasync.push(['Histats.track_hits','']);(function(){var hs=document.createElement('script');hs.type='text/javascript';hs.async=true;hs.src=('//s10.histats.com/js15_as.js');(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]||document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(hs);})(); Bruce Rastetter is a well-known figure in the world of media. After breeding many descendants of the seeds with that genetic makeup, the company has developed corn that can be planted in much narrower rows12 inches or even pairs of rows 8 inches apartincreasing the number of plants per acre to as much as 80,000. He's clearing the air a bit on a cold February day in his CEO offices of Summit Group, his multinational agriculture, investment and energy corporation near Alden. | After all, one year he allowed Branstad to take his private jet from a governor's conference in Milwaukee to his summer party, held on his $537,440 country estate near Hubbard. I think that prepared him. Many people ask about the amount of money Bruce Rastetter makes from Instagram. At the time Monsantowith Fraley, then president of the companys genomics group, leading the chargehad developed the biotechnology to insert genes into crop seeds, making them resistant to glyphosate, the plant-killing herbicide in the companys dominant weed killer, Roundup. In Iowa, Bruce Rastetter's Summit Agricultural Group said earlier this year that it was creating Summit Carbon Solutions, which plans to accept carbon emissions from biofuel facilities across. In the coming days, Rastetter will be narrowing down what questions hell ask the candidates on March 7. U.S. President | Rastetter's staff soon called to confirm the appointment with the governor. $140 per post at $7/CPM. ", HE WAS 'ALWAYS THE ONE WORKING,' FRIEND SAYS. Crucially, it also forbade them from using his seeds to breed their own. On an August day in 1995, they were riding the jet skis down the river with longtime friend Tad Ryan. I dont understand how peoples brains work and why they do what they do, says Stine. July 19, 2012 04:53 PM. Terry Branstad was a decade removed from a record 16 years as governor. Its not my opinion that matters, its the candidates, he said in a phone interview. He is incredibly focused and driven," said Nick Ryan, founder of American Future Fund, a nonprofit that Rastetter provided seed money to start and that has become a major financial contributor to conservative candidacies. Moreover, he could start his own breeding program using the seeds. Rastetter's work on the board cemented his opinion that it was unacceptable to have tuition continue to grow, doubling from 2001 to 2009 at the state's three public universities, which the regents oversee. "People who aren't successful don't," Rastetter said. The states ethics board later unanimously dismissed the complaint, noting that the position Rastetter held on the commission is one reserved for farmers. On this weeks episode of Idea Generation, Paul Rodriguez Jr. describes his early days as a young skateboarder in California, how he became the face of Nike Skate and eventually launched his own brand, Primitive Skateboarding. Tall has always been sexy for corn, even though less than half of the plant is actually harvested. He said he really wants a serious policy discussion rather than stump speeches, which in past couple of presidential cycles have only really addressed ethanol. Hes waving several reams of paper, filled with three years of yield results that drive Stines corn euphoria. With a combined market value of $320 billion, five publicly traded conglomerates own most of the action: Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow and Bayer. Hes already revolutionized agriculture. Disclamer: the number about Cody Decker's Instagram salary income and Cody Decker's Instagram net worth are just estimation based on publicly available information about Instagram's monetization programs, it is by no means accurate. Kevin Bogenreif Managing Director. What is this - to train Fabulous Bruce Rastetters corn whiskey lobbyists? Election disclosures show Rastetter gave $25,000 to an AFF-affiliated super PAC in the 2014 cycle, but had not given to the PAC since donating $5,000 in 2009 a drop in the bucket for groups that have spent tens of millions in recent years. He viewed it as a "legacy project," aimed simply at helping the poor people of Africa. Hell get to ask Jeb Bush what exactly he thinks about ethanol, pepper Scott Walker with questions about EPA regulations and quiz Marco Rubio about where he stands on GMO labeling, if he wants. Ballot measures, Who represents me? He says the role of the regents should be to eliminate duplication and increase efficiency because taxpayers own the universities. But times called for change. Currently, he holds the position of Chief Executive Officer of Summit Group, Chief Executive Officer & Director at SCS Capital LLC (a subsidiary of Summit Group), Chief Executive Officer at Summit Agricultural Group and Senior Advisor at Tiger Infrastructure Partners LP. State and local courts | He started by building agribusiness empires in some of Iowas key sectors including pork and ethanol then built close relationships with Iowas political elite, like Gov. I dont see extremely quick adoption, but I do think theres an early-mover advantage to doing it and learning to do it well., Stine is hardly alone in his beliefs. Bruce Rastetter talks about why he is hosting the Agriculture Summit among presidential hopefuls. Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world. It was the summer of 2009. Future changes in production practices could favor narrow rows at some point, says Mark Jeschke, DuPont Pioneers agronomy research manager. While juggling such concerns as a regent, Rastetter keeps busy as CEO of the Summit Group, which has farming operations in the U.S., other investments and plans to build an ethanol plant in Brazil. His disabilities were actually advantages that let him see things in ways others did not. "When you see him at fundraisers with top Republicans, it raises a whole lot of concerns. Rastetter co-founded Hawkeye Energy Holdings, the largest ethanol producer in the country. Based in Adel, Iowa (pop. He said he ended up with 20,000 hogs within four miles of his house and its made him sick literally. In 2011, Rastetter came under scrutiny after Branstad appointed his brother Brent Rastetter whose company Quality Ag builds large scale hog facilities to the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission. Abby Blome Seeds were planted in rows 42 inches apart so horses could traverse the fields. About the time Heartland was sold, investors at Whitney called to ask him if he wanted to work with ethanol. 6. He was raised near Alden, Iowa, on a 320-acre farm that grew corn and soy and raised hogs and cattle. A leaner, more efficient plant. Hes not afraid to speak his mind. With Hawkeye, that was 2006. Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, anchored live from London, tracks breaking news in Europe and around the world. But, as a consequence of his learning disabilities, Stine always worked slowly and carefully. They think, How can this be? Rastetter said it was unfortunate that the deal unraveled. Elections in 2023 | The secret to Stines golden corn? His achievement has been built on a foundation of hard effort. It takes a minute and a half to learn what there is to learn about plant breeding., At the time public universities dominated breeding, and for good reason: Profits were limited, since intellectual property rights for soybean plants didnt existand wouldnt for another 30 years. After earning a political science degree at the University of Iowa, he quit Drake University Law School and returned home to his love of farming. Many people ask this question about the money Bruce Rastetter makes from Facebook. Schlieman Operating Partner. While he wants to broaden the discussion, theres no doubt the candidates will still be pressed on where they stand on the Renewable Fuel Standard. Bruce Rastetter is the CEO and founder of the Summit Agricultural Group, an agribusiness based in Iowa. Hes also come under fire for an Iowa State University-backed development projectin Tanzania which critics argued was a land grab that would benefit his own company for receiving half a million in no-interest wind energy loans from a university program and for having a ISU researchers conduct a beef study on his own farm. The agribusiness entrepreneur and president of the Iowa Board of Regents, who has given more than $1.1 million in state political contributions since 2003, is not the sort to chuckle. On it are printed the scores of wins against Nebraska and Michigan. Hes loathed by liberal community activists who believe hes leveraged his money into political power for personal gain. Even if the process has grown more involved and advanced, the strategy behind breeding has changed little in ten millennia. It's a competitive world, but you've got to take time for people around you because life can change in an instant.". Says Stine: Im having too much fun., I cover the .1%: got my mind on their money and their money on my mind. "That would probably be something at one point that I wished had not happened. Monitor your investments 24 hours a day, around the clock from around the globe. Rastetter, whose company has a financial interest in agriculture subsidies and strong land prices, in particular, is eager to insert farm policy into the 2016 conversation, though he is coy about his own policy positions. "Because he tried and failed," Rastetter said. Bruce Rastetter said he didn't see Ryan, and "we ran into each other." Neither party will disclose the agreements terms, but that deal contributed to the phenomenal success of the Roundup Ready soybean seed, a technology thats now used in 96% of the soybean acreage in the U.S., likely generating in excess of $10 billion for Monsanto since 1997. Check Background Get Contact Info This Is Me - Edit "But the more I thought about it Bruce was one of those people who encouraged and supported me." School districts | "What we were doing was more environmentally sound than what we were doing on the small farm I grew up on. Rastetter "destroyed the confidence in the corporate pork industry among Davis County residents," said Francis Thicke, a former candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and a longtime advocate for sustainable farming practices. $35 per post at $7/CPM. I think I try to make a difference with what I do and what candidates I support, but I would consider myself more [an influencer] than a kingmaker, Rastetter said. Thats good news since the worlds population continues to grow by about 85 million every year, while arable land remains scarce. USING POLITICAL CLOUT TO 'MAKE A DIFFERENCE'. Its a long-running gag hes played on acquaintances, business competitors and even his wife, Molly, who had suffered the misfortune of the elevator actually breaking and had to climb down the ladderin heels. Now heres whats going to happen. [2] Hawkeye Renewables was followed by Hawkeye Gold Ethanol Marketing Group in 2008. Bruce's brother, Brent Rastetter, who owns a company that constructs hog confinement facilities, gave Branstad an additional $31,000 and was appointed earlier this year to the Iowa Environmental . It shows a superior foresight.. Stine noticed that corn plants hadnt changed much in generations. Harreld, who starts as president Monday [November 2], visited Cedar Rapids in early June to attend a meeting with Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter and Jean Robillard, UI's vice president of medical affairs and chairman of the UI Presidential Search and Screen Committee. Counties | State executives | A graduate of the University of Iowa, Rastetter holds a bachelors degree in political science. Theres always wrinkles in his science and negotiations that catch you off guard, says Monsantos Fraley. Some students said they felt the full weight of pressure for criticizing an influential donor. He has the right combination of everything, says son Myron, who has worked alongside his father at the company for 20 years. He started by selling seed, making cold calls, holding lunch and dinner meetings and riding on the tractor with older farmers who advised him to diversify investments. Rastetter pulled a lot of levers to get much of the GOP field to come to his agriculture event. According to wikipedia, Bruce Rastetter was born on August 15, 1990. He both shuns the spotlight and seeks it. Last summer, Chris Soules, the current star of The Bachelor who happens to work for Rastetters Summit Group as a real estate broker was reportedly in attendance, rubbing elbows with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

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