Beth Ford

Beth Ford has spent years insisting that what happens on the farm doesn’t stay on the farm—and in 2025 the rest of the country started paying attention. With U.S. farm bankruptcies up 46% last year from 2024, median farm household income negative for the year, immigration enforcement threatening to strip agricultural operations of their workforces, and rising costs, high interest rates, and eroding commodity prices, the Land O’Lakes CEO became one of the most urgent voices in American business on the collision course between federal policy and food supply. Inside Land O’Lakes, she’s simultaneously playing offense: A multiyear alliance with Microsoft produced Oz, an AI-powered agronomic assistant that gives farmers and their advisors access to decades of Land O’Lakes’ proprietary data. Land O’Lakes has even taken up such causes as reducing stereotypes of rural America in Hollywood. The company posted $16 billion in net sales and $265 million in net earnings in 2025. Ford, in her eighth year leading the member-owned cooperative, has made an art of translating rural urgency into policy action.