ALBERT LEA, Minn. — Sometimes it takes more than just the family to carry on the family tradition.

At Albert Lea Seed, a new generation of employee ownership is striving to carry on the family tradition of company founder Lou Ehrhardt.

Established in 1923, Albert Lea Seed had remained a family business for nearly a century when owners Mac, Tom, and Margaret Ehrhardt decided it was time to reposition the company for the future.

In the last half of 2021, the Ehrhardts set up a stock-ownership structure to transition the company to a group of key employees. While family members will retain majority stock ownership for the next few years, the transition will ultimately put majority ownership in the hands of the workers guiding the business today.

The new ownership team includes: Matt Helgeson, sales, agronomy native seed and research coordinator; Ben Hinueber, sales and plant operation; Elia Romano, sales, purchasing and business management; and Bob Atwell, who is actually a former employee. Together, the team has several decades of experience at Albert Lea Seed, and some of them are even related to the original family.

Helgeson is grateful for the strong foundation built by the Ehrhardt family, and looks forward to building a future that remains focused on serving the needs of farmers.

“It’s a mentality of knowing your customers, understanding them, being fair to them, and offering products and support to help them succeed,” Helgeson said. “That philosophy has trickled down from the top over the years and our team of employees understands what that means.”

Helgeson grew up in the Lake Mills area and moved back to the family farm several years ago. A graduate of Iowa State University in Ames, he worked at some of the big names in the farm seed business before returning to northern Iowa and joining Albert Lea Seed.

Crop diversity is key

As the leadership team looks to the future of Albert Lea Seed, Helgeson says they focus heavily on crop diversity. Certainly, they serve farmers who are strictly corn and soybeans, but they have also made a large commitment to farms that are actually reminiscent of the times when a typical farm had many different crops.

“Our vision is to focus on farms with diverse farming operations, farms which have more crops in addition to corn and soybeans; hay producers, forage producers, pasture, livestock operations are a few examples of that,” he said.

Given the tremendous number of acres of corn and soybeans in the U.S., it makes sense that many seed companies concentrate on those two crops. But that leaves open a wide vacuum of other needed crops.

“Our position is filling that need for all the other operations that are more diverse,” Helgeson said. “We are one of the few people that cater to that need.”

Albert Lea Seed offers native grasses, wildflower seed, cover crops, turf and lawn seed, and just about anything that’s hard to find elsewhere.

In addition to farm seed, Albert Lea Seed has a garden center offering everything from garden seed to bird seed and garden plants to livestock feed.

Focus on organic, non-GMO

While the diversity of crop seed is one thing that makes Albert Lea Seed unique, Helgeson said the intense focus on organic and non-GMO seed is another huge goal for the future.

“That is the trajectory for our growth and our future in a very large way,” Helgeson said.

At the same time, the company remains committed to the farmers they have served for generations with conventional seed; those that are GMO, Round-Up Ready, and the like.

“Anderson Seed Corn is our distribution channel for GMO seeds,” he said. “Those products used to be sold under the Viking brand, but about five years ago we made a decision to refocus our brand exclusively on organic and non-GMO, but we didn’t want to shut the door on those customers who had been buying those products so we became a distributor of those products through other brands.”

So, while farmers can purchase GMO corn seed under the Anderson name and GMO soybean seed under the Stine name, Viking is the brand for non-GMO and organic seed for both corn and soybeans.

Albert Lea Seed has a loyal following in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, stretching even to Ames, for conventional seed. But when it comes to organic and non-GMO, its customer reach broadens exponentially.

“For our organic seed and our non-GMO corn and soybeans, we have a footprint of sales from Colorado to Pennsylvania, New York, and even past there,” Helgeson said. “We ship to about every state, but we really focus on the upper Midwest, the Great Lakes Region, and then east into New York and Pennsylvania.”

As an industry, the market for non-GMO and organic seed is on a slow and steady uptick, according to Helgeson.

“About 50 percent of our seed ends up on an organic farm,” he said.

Building for the future

Positioning the company for even more growth in the future, Albert Lea Seed recently built a new deep clean facility.

“This is where we condition, clean, and package our seed,” Helgeson said. “It enabled us to double our capacity for seed cleaning, which is a big investment and a great benefit for high quality seed.”

The new facility includes seven seed-cleaning machines and a flexible design to improve output, reduce damage to seed, and save energy in the process.

When Lou Ehrhardt started Albert Lea Seed back in 1923, he couldn’t have foreseen the Great Depression looming in the near future, or the way American farmers would be asked to feed a nation, its troops, and U.S. Allies in World War II. One thing he must have known all about was organic and non-GMO, but no one had to call it that back then.

His name is still remembered at Albert Lea Seed, and serves as an inspiration to keep serving farmers with products and services that adapt to the changing times.

“The Ehrhardts were looking for a path to the next group of folks to lead this company and felt it was best to keep local ownership, and within our own employees,” Helgeson said.

“We are very customer focused,” he said “It’s great to be a part of the future here.”