Abstract

The case discusses how Beth Ford (Ford), CEO of Land O’Lakes Inc., a US-based agriculture and dairy cooperative, reshaped agriculture and food systems in the US through technological innovation and strategic collaboration. She was the first openly gay woman to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Under her leadership, Ford transformed the cooperative into a modern, tech-driven, and sustainability-focused enterprise. She championed integrating digital technologies, sustainable farming practices, and carbon credit programs. Her advocacy extended beyond Land O’Lakes, addressing broader challenges affecting the US farming community, including trade policies, immigration, rural broadband access, agricultural research investment, and climate change mitigation. Despite her successes, Ford faced a set of significant challenges that included balancing business growth with sustainability, navigating regulatory uncertainty and shifting trade policies, inflationary pressures, supply chain volatility, workforce and labor shortages, inadequate infrastructure, climate change and environmental pressures, and growing competition. Primarily, the global challenge of food security and climate change remained her most pressing concerns.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the challenges faced by a farmer-owned cooperative
• Analyze the use of technology and collaboration in promoting food production in a farmer-owned cooperative.
• Evaluate how responsible leadership can help address the challenges of globalization and identify the traits of a responsible leader.
• Recognize the innovative strategies that help a cooperative in advancing to a sustainable, equitable, and resilient whole food system.
• Explore the strategies to overcome the challenges Ford faced while addressing the global food and climate crises.

Keywords

Responsible Leadership, sustainability, collaboration, innovation, sustainable farming; food crisis, climate change,Beth Ford; dairy cooperative; agribusiness; business strategy; globalization; public policy; food systems