Interview with Jack Gherty, CEO & President 

Interviewer: Michael Boland, Kansas State University

Narrator: The Department of Agricultural Economics in the college of Agriculture at Kansas State University, brings you 'Case Studies in Agribusiness.' A look inside today’s ever changing world of the business of agriculture.

Lori Oleen: Hi, I am Lori Oleen. The interview that you are about to see was conducted recently between Jack Gherty, Chief Executive Officer and President of Land O’ Lakes, and Dr. Michael Boland from the Department of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University. In the interview, they discuss the portfolio restructuring that Land O’ Lakes has undergone in recent years and other aspects of strategic planning in the organization. Let’s listen in to what they have to say.

Michael Boland: We're joined today with Jack Gherty, CEO and President of Land O’ Lakes, which is a Minnesota-based cooperative. Jack, tell us what you think are your organization’s competitive strengths and core competencies, the things your company does especially well in your markets?

Jack Gherty: When I think of core competencies, I have to go back to the roots of who Land O’ Lakes is, and that comes to the fact that we were started as a marketing organization. So I think our whole focus on the marketing side of the organization and the culture we built - down layers within the people we have is - is important. Secondly, I am a strong believer in that people within the organization make a difference and so the culture we have is a fairly unique culture with a lot of emphasis built on accountability and performance. But equally important is the whole issue of values - finding an appropriate balance between work and family. And the reason that becomes important is that becomes an important element in attracting people to the company. Now when you take that question into today’s world with accelerating change, there is a couple of other things that I think of that are core competencies of ours. One is just the ability to grow. And our size, when we look at our ventures and whatever over the last ten years, we have increased our size about three-fold. Now if you don’t accompany that with performance, that’s not worth much. But the ability to grow I think is a real core competency. And the other thing within agriculture, with all of the changes in production agriculture that we have seen, I think the ability to deal with that change and modify strategies and to keep changing with the changing needs of customers and competitors is something, as I look at our business leaders in our businesses, is something I think we are pretty good at.

Michael Boland: You talked about that culture of accountability. Can you define for us what that is and how you developed that culture?

Jack Gherty: Well, as we go back to the people who are in leadership positions, we have leadership expectations of them and one of those leadership expectations is with respect to performance. And we really try to instill in them a belief that, the businesses that they are leading, need to measure and benchmark against other organizations, and they need - from a leadership point of view - to lead us into positions where we are equal to or better than those people. So I mean it really brings a system or a feeling of accountability that goes pretty far, pretty deep into the organization.

Michael Boland: What are some unique features of Land O' Lakes that helped distinguish you from your competitors?

Jack Gherty: Well, I come back first to the power of our brand. Ninety-six percent of the consumers in the United States recognize the Land O' Lakes’ brand.  But even deeper than that - within the brand - the attributes of the brand of freshness, of quality, really add a texture or depth to the power of the brand that’s pretty significant. I would secondly come back to the power of the culture. Within our vision of being one of the best food and agricultural companies of the world, one of the slogans that we kind of measure in terms of getting there is, we ask ourselves if we are our employees first choice for work. And that’s where the culture becomes pretty important because we need to be an organization that’s growing. That if people come and want to have an opportunity for advancement in near future, we have to be a company that they see is growing. What I think in today’s world is that the best people have lots of options. And so we not only have to be able to attract those people - and that’s culture, that’s opportunity for growth and it’s compensation system. So we put all of those things together and I think they are all pretty important.

Michael Boland: Tell us a little bit about the future of your company in your industry and what are you doing to prepare your organization for the future that you envision?

Jack Gherty: Well, Land O' Lakes has had a lot of growth in the last five to seven years. Quite frankly, right now as we look at our businesses, we try to look at them in the context of a portfolio of businesses. And when I do that, I think about the fact that we have four core businesses – feed, agronomy, seed and dairy foods. And if I just take the ag input businesses first:  feed, we are the number one feed company in the United States. We have the best research programs by far. In agronomy, we are the largest distribution company in the United States, where we distribute almost 11 million tons of plant food a year and $1.7 billion worth of crop protection products. And in seed, we are the third largest farm seed distributor in the United States.

Now in seed you might say, well you are only number three, but keep in mind that our seed business relates very closely to who we are in feed and it relates very closely to who we are in agronomy. So our seed business is significantly stronger because of the association with those other businesses. You know, as I look to the future and try to answer your question, in those businesses we have size and scale. Now we need to just make sure that we deliver the performance and expectations the owners have for profitability and return on invested capital. On the dairy food side of the business, we are really excited about who we are as a branded food company. The challenge to any branded food company is to bring innovation into their product lines and that’s the only way that you bring life and vitality in on an on-going basis to your branded businesses. For instance, this year we are right now in the process of rolling out spreadable butter. Why is that a big deal - because there aren't any spreadable butters in the United States and we will be the first one out there and it’s just a good example of an innovation in dairy. We are also the number one deli cheese player in the United States. But as we feel good about those businesses, we are also mindful of the fact that when we look at our size and scale relative to other food companies, we are a relatively small food company. We could look at it in one sense and say, well in terms of dollar sales, you are the 23rd largest food company in the United States. And given I personally believe that size and scale is important, if you put it on the back of a postcard, what you would see us doing is very simply saying, make and deliver the promises and our feed and agronomy business, deliver the earnings return on investments, improve the balance sheet and then grow our added value dairy foods business.

Michael Boland: How do you go about finding new opportunities for your organization when you think about the joint ventures and acquisitions that you have undertaken last the few years?

Jack Gherty: Well, I don’t think it’s as challenging or intimidating sometimes as people might think it is. I think one of the most important things that we do - and when I go out and talk to other organizations, I really emphasize that they do - is you first really need to spend a lot of time making sure you understand the competitive environment out there. And what does that mean - you need to spend a lot of time in the businesses you are in - understanding the industry and looking a little bit outside-in, and you need to spend time looking at who your customers are.  But not as importantly about who your customers are today, but who your customers are going to be one, three, five years from now and the same thing with your competitors. The reason that is so important is that - how do you develop strategy if you don’t have that data. Now when you get to that point, then as we think about it, we first get our focus comes from our mission, which is to optimize our number of dairy crop and live stock production. Why is that important, well it says that the businesses we are going to be in. When we go beyond that, we will look within those businesses and they ask a very fundamental question: what businesses, long-term, can we truly add value in for our owners? When we do that then we come back to this portfolio of businesses, with all of this industry information we have, and we believe that long term, in whatever businesses we are in, we need to have number one or two market share. And so we take all of that information and pretty soon it starts to evolve into a road map that says this is a business that maybe we ought to sell off and this is a business that we ought to grow. And that’s really where we are today, in that we have really narrowed our focus, in that we are very large and very focused on feed. We are very large and very focused on agronomy distribution, on farm seeds, and on the dairy foods business - and even there someone could look us at and say, “Boy aren't still too diversified?” That maybe something we have to look at in the future but that’s how we get to that focus today.

Michael Boland: You have a number of joint ventures with other cooperatives and businesses. How you go about managing those relationships?

Jack Gherty: Well, the first thing we do is start with the businesses we want to be in first. And then as we look at opportunities in a particular business segment, obviously you have lots of alternatives. You have the alternative of just growing from within - in other words - investing with capital and growing market share from within. You have the opportunity of making an acquisition.  Or potentially you have the acquisition of saying there is somebody else out there that if we want to get from A to D, maybe the easiest way to do it, and the way that we can add the most value for owners, is to do a joint venture. And over time that is absolutely the philosophy we have had. We believe that we are very good at doing joint ventures. Now, it also comes back to some issues of control and accountability. One of them deals with, how do you deal with joint ventures with the board of directors? And there what we do is, we just have a black and white rule, that any joint ventures we are in, that any decisions that would be made if we own the company a 100%, we will make sure we take back to the board. So that the board doesn't believe or feel that we have created a joint venture out here as a way to insulate it from the direct involvement of our board. Now we have to do that through innovative structures and different things, but we do that. The second thing we do with the board is to make sure that there is full disclosure on an on-going basis of all of the financial implications of any of these ventures and especially if some of the ventures are off balance sheet or aren’t consolidated because this obviously is one of the issues with some other organizations that weren’t quite that candid or open with their boards of directors. From a management point of view, I have controls with the people that run the business units, relative to capitals, relative to the type of agreements they can enter into, and those type of rules apply whether or not it’s in a business that we own or whether it’s in a venture. Now if it’s a venture, it’s not quite that simple, but in a venture we work out some other rules. If they have to go to a meeting and have a capital decision that’s of a magnitude that I should be involved with, we will work out some rules that they have whatever authority they have with my blessing ahead of time before they go into that meeting. So anyway, it works out very well and we don’t sacrifice accountability or control in any of our ventures.

Michael Boland: You have always had a national brand. You have since, in last five years or so, decided to expand through mergers and acquisition to have plants located all through the east and west coasts. What made you decide to move from your tradition Midwest locations to a more of a national focus?

Jack Gherty: Well, the main thrust of what we are trying to do is to stay focused in how we add value in serving customers. And as much pride as we took in the productivity of our employees and of our plants in the Upper Midwest, the fact of the matter is that our brand, as you said, is a national brand, and the customers - meaning the retailers we serve - are on a national basis. Other organizations had moved fairly dramatically in diversifying their manufacturing operations so that they had manufacturing operations that were closer to the retailers or the customers, and by doing that they sometimes not only reduced transportation costs, but even in terms of service, in terms of having product there closer, had made a difference. So we looked at our dairy business and said you know with the power and the strength of the business we have, long-term, we really need to have strategically located  dairy manufacturing systems in other parts of the country to meet our customer needs. And as a result of that, in a very focused way, we went forth and ended up - through a merger - picking up a very strategic butter facility in Pennsylvania. And also we went out to California and had another merger which brought us a large butter and cheese manufacturing complex in the Central Valley in California. So when we ended up, we now have plants in all regions of the country, which make it easier for us to effectively add value; which it all comes back to adding value to our customers in our branded manufacturing system.

Michael Boland: What challenges do you face in implementing and executing your strategy?

Jack Gherty: Well, I think that a couple of things jump out at you right away, and the first is that you have customers - in any of our businesses, whether it’s in the food businesses or on the ag business with farmers or local cooperatives - who are changing, who are growing, who are demanding greater value from whoever their suppliers are. So that becomes the biggest challenge. I used to go to our annual meeting five or six years ago, and used for a year or so, a slogan that was 'whatever you did to get you there is never enough to keep you there.' The whole theory being is that if you are performing here just to tread water, you have to got to keep increasing your performance just add value to customers. Second thing is that there is something out there that’s called competitors, and competitors are doing the same thing we are doing.  So if we get synergies and we feel really good about those synergies, what if our competitor got two excellent synergies? Well then we have lost ground versus them in terms of our competitive position and potentially in terms of who adds more value to the ultimate customer. So I think those are the two things that jump out at me. I think the third thing, and it gets back to what I believe is a core competency, is that the world is changing so quick. If I would go back in the beginning years of my career, you could develop strategies and have plans to implement it over a period of time and you would be successful if you were effective in implementing them. Today, I don’t think that works. Today, there is such a sense of accelerating change, that you have to develop the strategies and you have to implement them, but you have to be nimble enough that three months into it, you may need to change your strategies 45 degrees and be able to implement them online, and that becomes a real challenge to the best business organizations - not to complain about it that this or this is changing, but that it’s just the environment that they're operating in, and to win you have to have a competency to be able to do that. But I think as I say that, the words are a lot easier than the actions.

Michael Boland: What makes managing a cooperative different than an investor oriented-firm?

Jack Gherty: Well, I think one of the things that makes managing a cooperative better, more satisfying is that, when you think about who the ultimate ownership of a cooperative is, it’s farmers in local cooperatives. When you think about the rural values and what they stand for, to have any position but especially a leadership position in trying to make a difference in improving the life or their income for them, is something that’s fairly unique, and not to knock public corporations, but those shareholders out there are invisible. I mean it’s people who will measure your success by whether you drive increased shareholder value and I think increase shareholder value shows up in the share price. Quite frankly, they are not as concerned with the fundamental reasons that you exist. So I think that’s one thing that makes cooperatives very different. Secondly, and it is only a factor of many, many factors, is that we have found that when you combine it with other things, the fact that our ownership structure is such that we are committed to stay in the food business to be a branded food company, that has some sense of stability and we are going to be there a long term is pretty important to a lot of people because they see what’s happened in industry, in general and the food industry about A buying out B and then being bought by C and so who are they are going to work for and who will they be working for a year or two from now. There is a certain value to coming to work for a company like Land O' Lakes - if we have the other attributes, meaning that we are growing, we are sustainable, that we are paying competitive salaries, and that we have the right culture, that we attract some very, very good people for that reason. Now on the other side, cooperatives are private business organizations. Why is that important? Because in terms of being able to access capital, we have more challenges than public companies. And secondly, we can get into issues of governance relative to the size of our board of directors and relative to the size of for the amount of expertise or diversity we have on the boards. That’s not being critical as much, as to say that a CEO with a lot of self confidence would want the strongest, most diverse, right-sized board to make himself stronger. Sometimes we struggle with that with cooperatives, and I guess the third, and last thing I would say, is that it is a little bit more difficult and more challenging for a cooperative CEO to change business direction, even when the performance on that sector may not be very good. Why, because you are making a pragmatic business decision, but in this case it may affect, or directly affect your owners. In your ability to do that, you can say in that in one hand, you run the business as a business, but there is a little bit of political reality that it isn't quite that black and white.

Michael Boland: How do you convey these core values of your organization onto your managers and your employees, given the fact that you are a cooperative and that it is such an important part of your with the culture in the organization?

Jack Gherty: Well, if you mean the core values relative to performance and accountability - the way I do it is honestly and candidly as I can along the lines that as we have become a bigger organization, our ultimate success or value will depend on how we perform as a business, how we operate as a team,  whether we have the right culture, whether we have the right compensation systems, whether we make the right business decisions from time to time, and that really has nothing to do with who owns us or how we distribute our earnings. So in that sense, I really try to separate the issue of business performance and accountably in how we run the business day-to-day, from how we may ultimately distribute earnings.

Michael Boland: When people hear the name Land O' Lakes, what you want them think of?

Jack Gherty: Well, I think probably the most common denominator, and what happens especially in the east coast, is when you tell somebody that you work for Land O' Lakes, they say the butter company. Even as we go in the south, and as our geography is expanded with the local co-operatives on the farm input side as the result of the joint ventures with Farmland, people down there don’t recognize us as much for our feed business or agronomy business, which are bigger on a national basis. They’ll still say, 'oh you are the food company or you are the butter company.' So I think, first on a general basis as a branded food company, that’s were I would want the general public to recognize us because that’s probably where our brand is our most valuable asset. With it were employees here at K-State who may be looking at Land O' Lakes as a potential employer, it would be some different things. There it would be, that is an organization that’s very focused. It is a company that’s growing, that’s making money, that there will be opportunities for me, and by the way, as I talk to their people, they have a very unique value system. They have a culture there that emphasizes teamwork, their values, and that is somebody I would like to work for.

Michael Boland: Were there any special role models, educational experiences, books or ideas that have influenced you as a CEO or President?

Jack Gherty: That is always a difficult question for me because, I think in lot in most people’s mind, there is someone out there that has been that role model or whatever, and I feel kind of an intellectual derelict or something like that when I pause and say no. I would answer it a lit bit differently. I would answer it from the perspective that growing up on a farm, the things that you didn’t think about, but were pretty instrumental in molding who you are, with the whole issue of your work ethic. And on a diary farm that means seven days a week - morning and night. It means family, it means the balance, interestingly and in today’s world with all the stress of, without understating intellectually what was going on, how farm families balance work, family, and community. That is a pretty potent message for an awful lot of people in their twenties and thirties today who are struggling for, what is that balance as I go to work for Corporate America, and how do I avoid being the victim of this job that makes me work 20 hours a day. I think secondly, in just my own experience, I was involved in lot of sports when I was in high school. So just the whole emphasis is on team. It wasn’t anything that I did it intentionally, but it becomes your experience. I think third, I did not, when I got to Land O' Lakes and in even until a couple of years before I got into this position, I did not aspire necessarily for this position. Early in my career, I would have won the lottery if I would become general counsel. I enjoyed what I was doing. I got ahead, I think as I reflect back on it, by helping other people win. And so, it just made me feel good. But that, I think, contributed a lot to the things that went on behind the scenes and I never saw that got me into this position. So as I think about all those things, it isn’t any one person, but there were things that molded who I am and maybe some of the attributes that I think are important in a leadership position.

Michael Boland: What is your greatest challenge right now as leader of Land O' Lakes?

Jack Gherty: My greatest challenge today is to be flexible, to understand what we need to do right now for next 12 to 24 months - strategically and tactically to win. We have proven that we have a great culture, we have a great workforce, we have size and scale. What we have to do now is to implement. We have to deliver the earnings and returns in the businesses we have. And it is may be not glamorous to people, but it is an inward focus right now, and I believe business organizations go through cycles. We went through a cycle, where in a very focused way, we had lot of growth. Now, the real challenge to us is that we have proven we can grow, now we can improve on what we have.

Michael Boland: Where do you see Land O' Lakes in 5-10 years?

Jack Gherty: I see us basically being in the businesses we are - staying in the feed business, staying as a agronomy distribution company, and I see us growing more, hopefully both internally and externally, as a branded, dairy-based food company.

Michael Boland: How have you gone about building that brand awareness in consumers regarding Land O' Lakes?

Jack Gherty: Well the foundation of Land O' Lakes brand goes back into the 1920’s and the core of who we are is in a number of milestones - where we did things that the consumer respected and grew to see value, not just in the butter that was in the package, but the butter that was represented by the package. I mean it may not be very significant to most people, but it at one point, butter wasn’t made from sweet cream; it was made from sour cream. In fact, you probably have never tasted butter from sour cream. Is that a big deal today? No, but it was back then. There were packaging changes that went on over the years. Today people don’t understand that butter can me made from whole milk or butter can be made from cream. If butter is made from cream, where did the cream come from? What temperature was at kept at before it came? What is the quality of that cream, it can have small differences, but it can be a difference. So I mean that the power of the brand and the consistent product that the consumer gets everyday is really, really important. I think the other thing tough, that in terms of what we need to do relative to the brand, is innovation. Brands lose their strength if the consumer doesn’t see them on ongoing basis, bringing new innovation - meaning new products or maybe packaging, it could be whatever in the consumers mind is something innovative, that's something that we are very focused on trying to do with Land O' Lakes brand today.

Michael Boland: What types of magazines and books do you read? Have you read any good books lately?

Jack Gherty: Well, I don’t read as much as I should, and I don’t use that as an excuse, but part of it is that as I moved into my responsibilities as CEO, I had three young daughters at home. So the challenge of having a more responsible job and doing all of the things that fathers should do, without the excuse that will I just got a difficult job, tends to cut down the amount of reading I do. I read lot of magazines. I read a lot of business books. But in terms of the time, quite frankly, just to do recreational, relaxing reading, I just don’t do as much I'd like to.

Michael Boland: What types of business management - do you read the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week or something else?

Jack Gherty: No, I do get the Harvard Business Review routed through me, and if I see an article in there that I particularly like, I’ll read it. If I try to focus on anything, I really try to focus on leadership books because, I think, in my position today, if I can just either read books that either help me reinforce what I am doing, or saying this is a pretty effective strategy but if you'd change it to 10 degrees it should be more effective. I think in terms of making myself a better leader, those in the time I have to read, tend to be what I tend to read. And the most recent book I read, I gave to a number of my officers was 'Good to Great.'

Michael Boland: When you retire from Land O' Lakes, what would you like to say is your greatest legacy to the organization?

Jack Gherty: Well, comeback to the book, 'Good to Great,' I have believed that the CEO’s job - core part of it - is to spend a lot of time on strategy and strategic direction. I agree with that, but I also think that the most effective leader is one who creates the right culture or operating state, but also builds the best team around him. And my definition of building the best team is to build a group of people, who as you leave, first you won't be missed at all because you have built a team that’s brighter, stronger, and they're the next generation leaders that are going to come on and replace you. So in a sense, when you leave it may be a little bit of turning in your stomach because your first impression is that you won’t be missed at all, in fact you are not. And the next impression is, as you reflect on that, is I had a little bit to do with that and I feel pretty good about that.

Michael Boland: Do you have a personal management philosophy? And if so, how would you summarize that in a simple statement?

Jack Gherty: Well, I don’t spend a lot of time studying management styles, but in my own analysis of myself, people would define me as a situational leader. There is some pluses and minuses, and the value of the situational leader is one that has some flexibility or adaptability to adopt different management styles - be in command and control when you need to be a controller - you need to be a controller so you can to do a lot of things with numbers - or you can be a socializer. Some people don’t like to be labeled that, but if you are trying to build the people environment, hey that’s okay. The only challenge with being a situational leader, which is kind of interesting, is that we all, when we deal in certain environments, see who we are reporting to, and if it's command and control and if we don’t like that and don’t think it’s a right style, we know what that person is, so we adapt to that person. When you are a situational leader, I had got some feedback once that people sometimes got intimidated because I would be like the neighbor next door and be very sociable and ask about the kids, but the next time they see me, I may be in a controller position, and it was kind of intimidating. So in my interesting way, and one of the things I did, was that I took that information to an officers' meeting and spent an hour and a half saying, 'this is who I am, so it will just help you understand me.' And part of the message of doing that was to say whatever your own leadership style is, if you did that same kind of thing with your direct reports, we will probably be a stronger organization.

Michael Boland: How valuable have you found the process of setting a mission and vision for your organization?

Jack Gherty: That’s a really interesting question because, first of all, I go back to the importance of culture in an organization, and I go back there because I think the leader of any organization is the strongest determinant of the culture of the organization, and to the extent to which that leader walks the talks in living whatever that those cultural attributes are everyday, the stronger the culture will be. But it won’t evolve over a day or a week or a month or a year. It will evolve over a period of time. But it’s pretty powerful when you get there. There are different elements, different dimensions of culture, or of the framework of the company or the business organization. Mission, vision and values are three pretty important ones.  My simple definition of mission is purpose or reason for being. I did an interesting exercise with my officers back in '91 or '92. At an officer's meeting, I asked them to take out a piece of paper and write down the company mission. I knew what was going to happen - the company mission at that point, was three paragraphs long and I knew what each of them were thinking, please Jack don’t call on me (laughs). So I didn’t because I mean I knew that. But the point I wanted to make was that in terms of focus, very fundamentally, what's our purpose or reason for being? If we, as the leadership group can’t articulate it, then we have got a problem. And whatever the mission is, it needs to be short enough so that people, at least, can remember the essence of it. And our's ended up being - we put a tag line is to be a market and customer driven cooperative committed to optimizing our member's dairy crop and livestock production. The market as customer driven, is a little bit of a cultural response to the fact that we were a cooperative and a cooperative tends to be inward looking and it was in the mission to get those words mark at customer driven right up front. The word cooperative we said is our purpose or reason for being. When we go out to the world, we don’t show it on our sleeves that we're a cooperative, but in our mission. We are not embarrassed to say we are a cooperative. We spent lot of time on the word optimize, and that was in the basis that no fuzziness, no cobwebs relative to the accountability of this organization, to believe performance is important. So optimize, and then members' dairy, crop and  livestock production was the only generic way we could kind of talk about the diversity of our businesses. We did the same thing with respect to the values and in that we did go through a more interesting exercise. We spent time at an officers' meeting, asking some pretty basic questions of what do we believe in, what do we stand for, and what are the values of this company. And there was some consistency with somethings but the message that came across loud and clear was again, if the leaders can’t articulate what are values are, how do we expect to have consistent values throughout the organization? So in that case, we spent a little bit of time, meaning three to four months, using employee groups in developing, what ended up as being our values. Now it's kind of interesting, in terms of framework for a business organization, you may say well, it's nice to have values but are they important? I would say that if you read the inside pages of most corporations, they all have values. I would be a little be cynical, as that the words are easy but the actions are more difficult.  I mean do those organizations really live those values - do they walk the talk? So I think, you talk about a framework.  Well, the mission helps, values help.  We also spent quite a little bit of time on vision. Vision should answer the question: where are you going and what do you want to be. Now, think about this in this context, it’s not what you are doing now, it’s not what's in your annual business plan, but it is more inspirational to a degree of if you really could be everything you wanted to be, what would that be. And in our sense, we said we literally want to be one of the best food and agricultural companies in the world. It doesn’t mean that we are all over in the world, but it did say some things relative to performance. It did say some things in the businesses we choose to be in - who we're going to measure ourselves against.  All of those things really provided, maybe some framing - maybe like a picture frame - mission, vision and values we have.  I have a slide or a chart I use, and the fourth corner of that is co-operative heritage and principals. And the reason I did that was for a pretty pragmatic reason - that as we have grown and as people see me especially come out and talk about making money and about size and scale, there is a natural inclination to compare me, or us as an organization, with these friendly grass roots organizations, who are not changing and are not going to win long term, but it sure sells a lot better in the country. So this sense of don’t forget who we are and who owns us, even in terms of having it on the chart, is a good message. I mean it’s a message that we believe in, but it’s also a message that communicates that as we try to be a very focused, business-oriented organization, we are not going to forget where are roots are and who owns us.

Lori Oleen: The challenge for Land O' Lakes is to execute a strategy and deliver on the value from it’s portfolio of businesses. We hope you enjoy this interview with Jack Gherty, Chief Executive Officer and President of Land O' Lakes.