Ralph Hofstad

Hofstad was president and CEO of Land O’Lakes from 1974 to 1989. Ralph Hofstad attended Hamline University in St. Paul before enrolling in the Navy, serving from July 1943 to July 1946. He married his wife, Adeline, in 1947 and graduated from Northwestern University in 1948. In 1948 he began his career at Illinois Farm Supply Co. By 1965 he had risen to president of FELCO (Farmers Regional Cooperative of Iowa), and in 1970 he helped engineer the merger between FELCO and Land O’Lakes. He became senior vice president of ag supplies and services of Land O’Lakes after the merger, and eventually CEO. Hofstad was CEO when Land O’Lakes established its international development division in 1981. In his retirement, Hofstad continued to promote market-based farming principles in Russia as executive director of the Russian Community Farm Project. He applied what he learned in his 40-year-plus career in cooperative agriculture programs to Russians who were in the process of moving from the old system of large collective farms to smaller family-owned and -operated farms. Hofstad is survived by his wife and their six children, Diane, Barb, Jim, Ron, Tom and Sue; 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.