Land O'Lakes, Inc.

What does Land O'Lakes own?
The cooperative owns the Land O'Lakes dairy brand, Purina Animal Nutrition, WinField United crop inputs, Vermont Creamery, Alpine Lace, and the Truterra sustainability business. Its assets include dozens of dairy plants, feed mills, and distribution facilities across the United States.

Is Land O'Lakes publicly traded?
No. Land O'Lakes is a member-owned cooperative. Its common equity belongs to approximately 1,100 dairy farmer-members and member cooperatives and cannot be bought on any exchange.

Who founded Land O'Lakes?
The company was founded in 1921 by 320 Minnesota dairy cooperatives that federated as the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association. There was no individual founder; it was a collective action by farmer-owned creameries.

Where is Land O'Lakes headquartered?
The company is headquartered in Arden Hills, Minnesota, a suburb of Saint Paul. It has operated in the Twin Cities area since its 1921 founding.

How many brands does Land O'Lakes own?
The cooperative operates roughly six principal brands: the flagship Land O'Lakes dairy brand, Purina Animal Nutrition, WinField United, Vermont Creamery, Alpine Lace, and Truterra. Its model concentrates on one consumer brand plus business-facing agricultural identities rather than a broad consumer portfolio.

Who owns Land O'Lakes?
The farmer-members own it. Approximately 1,100 dairy farm families and a network of member agricultural cooperatives hold the voting equity, elect the board, and receive patronage refunds from annual earnings. No corporation or outside shareholder controls the company.

Is Land O'Lakes the same as Purina pet food?
No. Land O'Lakes owns Purina Animal Nutrition, the livestock feed business descended from Purina Mills, which it acquired in 2001. Purina pet care brands such as Pro Plan belong to Nestle Purina PetCare, a legally separate company since 1986.

Land O'Lakes formed in 1921, when 320 dairy cooperatives across Minnesota federated into the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association. The immediate problem was butter. Individual creameries produced inconsistent quality, which dealers exploited to push prices down. By grading and marketing butter collectively, the member creameries could demand better returns for a uniform product.

The name came from the public. A 1924 naming contest drew hundreds of entries, and the winners, two Minnesotans who each suggested Land O'Lakes in reference to the state nickname, split a $500 prize. The organization formally adopted the name Land O'Lakes Creameries, Inc. in 1926.

Growth through the mid-twentieth century moved the cooperative beyond butter. It added evaporated milk, cheese, and dried milk production, entered the turkey and egg businesses, and built an agricultural services arm supplying feed and seed to member farms. The expansion turned a butter marketing federation into a diversified farm supply and food processing business. In 1970 the organization adopted the simplified name Land O'Lakes, Inc.

Two acquisitions in the modern era reshaped the portfolio. In 2001 the cooperative acquired Purina Mills, the livestock feed business founded on the same Purina checkerboard heritage as the pet food company but legally separate from it since 1986, for approximately $230 million after court-supervised bidding. The deal required antitrust divestitures of overlapping feed mills and made Land O'Lakes one of the largest animal nutrition companies in North America. In 2016 the cooperative merged its WinField crop inputs business with United Suppliers, an Iowa-based inputs wholesaler, creating WinField United and doubling the segment's scale. The next year it bought Vermont Creamery, adding premium goat cheese and cultured butter to its consumer range.

Leadership milestones came in the 2010s. Chris Policinski, CEO from 2005, presided over the Purina integration and the WinField United merger before retiring in 2018. Beth Ford, then chief operating officer, succeeded him, becoming the first openly gay woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Under Ford the cooperative launched Truterra's carbon and sustainability programs, removed the Native American maiden from its packaging in 2020, and marked its centennial in 2021.

Financial performance has followed the farm cycle. Net sales peaked near $17 billion in fiscal 2023 before softening crop prices pulled revenue to $16.2 billion in 2024. Fiscal 2025 brought a recovery to $16.4 billion in net sales and $265 million in net earnings, an 11 percent increase, with crop inputs producing the majority of pretax profit and dairy contributing its strongest results in years on a rebound in American butter consumption.

The cooperative's sustainability work runs through Truterra, which since 2016 has enrolled farmers in regenerative agriculture programs covering soil health, nitrogen management, and carbon sequestration. Truterra sells the resulting emissions reductions and inset claims to food and agriculture companies, creating a revenue stream from practices the cooperative promotes to its members.

On the consumer side, Land O'Lakes sells a USDA Organic certified butter line, and the company publishes an annual sustainability report covering its processing footprint. The cooperative is not a certified B Corp.

The deeper ethical claim is structural: as a cooperative, the company returns profits to approximately 1,100 dairy farm families through patronage rather than to external shareholders. Environmental criticism of the business model centers on industrial dairy's methane and water impacts, which the company addresses through Truterra programs and processing efficiency targets rather than through third-party certification.

Land O'Lakes consistently ranks among the largest farmer cooperatives in the United States on the NCBA CLUSA Co-op 100, the sector's standard ranking, where it has held the top two positions alongside CHS for years.

CEO Beth Ford has appeared repeatedly on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list and in 2022 received the Edison Achievement Award for leadership. The company's Truterra program has drawn recognition from USDA climate-smart agriculture funding awards, including federal grants for climate-smart commodity pilots.

Antitrust conditions on Purina Mills: The 2001 acquisition of Purina Mills required divestitures of overlapping feed mills under a consent decree with federal antitrust regulators. The deal closed after court-supervised proceedings and the required sales.

Packaging controversy: The Native American maiden image used on packaging since 1954 drew long-running criticism as a stereotype. The company removed it in 2020 and replaced it with farmer photography, a decision it framed around its centennial and farmer-owned identity rather than the criticism itself.

Water quality litigation: Like other large dairy processors, Land O'Lakes has faced litigation and regulatory attention over nutrient runoff and groundwater nitrate contamination linked to dairy farming in its supply regions, most visibly in Minnesota and California proceedings. These matters involve member farms rather than the company's own plants and are typically addressed through compliance programs and settlements rather than large judgments.

Routine product recalls: The company issues occasional voluntary recalls for allergen or contamination concerns through the FDA process, none of which has produced a major public safety event in recent years.