Harry H. Stine is a farmer and seedsman. In three decades his company, Stine Seed Company, has become one of the top soybean seed suppliers in the country. In addition, Stine’s breeding program has become the most renowned private breeding program in the country, supplying genetics for approximately half of all the soybean acres planted in the Midwest.

Stine was raised in rural Dallas County, Iowa. He graduated from Central Dallas High School, and went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas. After college, Stine returned home to help his father Bill who, in addition to farming and raising hogs, had established Stine Seed Farm to clean public soybean varieties.

Then, in the late 1960s, Stine joined with four other seedsmen in forming Improved Variety Research (IVR), one of the first private soybean research and development companies in the nation. Research was conducted at the Stine farm near Adel, Iowa. In 1973, IVR was dissolved, and Stine and head plant breeder Bill Eby founded Midwest Oilseeds, which today is the soybean genetics licensing company of choice in the United States.

Retail soybean seed sales efforts began in 1979, when Stine began selling soybean seed under his own label, Stine Soybean Seeds. In the early 1990s, in addition to being one of the top four soybean seed companies in the U.S., Stine began selling corn and soft red winter wheat under the Stine label.

Through it all, Stine has remained a farmer first, and seedsman and businessman second. His love for the land has kept Stine involved in nearly all aspects of seed research and production, even as the company has experienced tremendous growth.

His efforts in the field of agriculture have not gone unnoticed. In 1989, Stine was named Agrimarketer of the Year by the Iowa chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA). Also in that year, he was named the Ernst & Young Iowa/Nebraska Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2000, the Des Moines Register named him as one of the 50 most influential people in Iowa, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Iowa Business Hall Of Fame.

Today, Stine is a member of the American Society of Agronomy and the American Seed Trade Association. In addition, he also serves on the board of directors of the Trees Forever Foundation, the Iowa Arboretum and the Brenton Arboretum.