Iowa Has Only One Billionaire And He Comes From Agriculture
In 42 of the 50 states, you can find at least one billionaire, and yes Iowa is one of those states.
Well, Iowa is one of eight states that only have only one billionaire- the others being Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and South Dakota. This is all according to Forbes’s annual World’s Billionaire List.
So, who is the lucky guy in Iowa?
With a net worth, as of March 11, 2022, of $6.9 billion, Harry Stine continues to be the only billionaire in the state of Iowa.
And what should be expected from a billionaire from Iowa is that his fortune comes from the corn and soybean industry.
As a boy, Stine started farming at the ripe age of 5 years old on the family’s farm. That’s where his love for the industry began. In 1964, he joined his father’s soybean cleaning business Stine Seed Farm
Stine became in seed breeding when he found unusual soybean plans in one of the companies’ fields. This sparked his interest to begin his own soybean-breeding program.
In 1979, Stine launched his own seed sales efforts where he began selling soybean seeds under his own label: Stine Soybean Seeds. By 1992, he became one of the top four soybean seed companies in the US and he started to expand his label to corn and red winter wheat.
According to Forbes, his fortune also comes from licensing corn and soybean genetics to multinationals including Monsanto and Syngenta.
Today, he owns hundreds of patents in soybean and corn genetics and does over $1 billion in sales annually.