Hometown: Hooper, Nebraska
Current home: Fremont, Nebraska
CASNR major: Agricultural economics
Date of graduation: December 1999
What is your life like today?
I live a very, very blessed life. I am the fourth generation president of my family’s seed production company, Western Integrated Seed, Inc. (formerly Hoegemeyer Enterprises). Western Integrated Seed is a complete field to farm seed production company. We have the ability to not only grow and produce corn seed, but we have a very modern seed plant that allows us to condition, treat, package and provide logistics for our customers. More importantly, I am married to my best friend Kari, and we have four beautiful children: Elisabeth (11), Andrew (9), Phillip (7) and Joseph (5). With the business and my growing family, I do not have a hard time staying busy.
What brought you to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln?
This is an interesting story. Despite the fact that the Hoegemeyer family had five alumni from three generations attend UNL, I always thought that I was going to go to an out-of-state university. When it came time to choose, my father, who is an internationally respected corn geneticist, reminded me that after attending UNL, he had to tutor and carry kids in grad school who attended Harvard, Oxford, Cal-Berkeley, etc. We are truly blessed to have a world-class university right here in our state. From UNL, you truly can go anywhere at any level and succeed. Our flagship university produces students second to none.
What is your favorite memory as a CASNR student?
During the second semester of my junior year, I was lucky enough to get tapped into Mortar Board. When the dust settled, I found out that I was the only agriculture student in either Mortar Board or Innocents Society. That was very overwhelming and humbling. There were so many fantastic students in my classes on East Campus, so I was very motivated to represent not only agriculture students, but the outstanding faculty and industry, which is the backbone of our state.
How did your experience in CASNR shape your career path?
Like the aforementioned, there were so many talented students during my time at UNL. The professional network that CASNR produces is amazing. At literally every trade show or meeting I attend, I run into someone I went to school with or someone who is connected to CASNR. It is really fun seeing people you went to the university with as executives at huge multinational agribusinesses and other amazing firms, doing amazing things.
What advice do you have for CASNR students interested in your career field?
Consumer education will be the key to success in the agricultural field going into the future. Keep these two things in mind: First of all, fewer and fewer people produce more and more of the food for our world. The vast majority of our population, especially in this country, is further removed from the farm than ever. This leads to ignorance and misperceptions about our food production systems, and may lead to a dangerous stifling of agricultural biotechnology. Secondly, we live in a society that is ever more dependent on science, and there has never been greater societal ignorance of science. If we are going to avoid mass starvation by 2050, we agricultural professionals will need to use cutting-edge science to achieve our food production goals. We all have to understand that no matter where we work in the food and fiber system, it is our responsibility to educate our consumers every chance we get!