Jeff Johnson

Jeff grew up on a diversified crop and livestock farm in Southeastern Iowa. Jeff expanded his agriculture experience by working on a local dairy farm, driving detasselling machines at a seed production facility, as well as certifying hybrid seed fields for export for the Iowa Crop Improvement Association (housed on the ISU campus).

Jeff received his Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture Education from Iowa State University, with focus on animal nutrition and row crop production.  Jeff taught high school vocational agriculture and served as the local FFA chapter advisor for three years in Northwest Iowa, before returning to Iowa State to work on a Master’s program in Agriculture Education focused on international agriculture development, with a minor in Economics and an emphasis in Latin American Studies. Jeff served on the University Extension staff with 4-H and youth agricultural programs and studied Spanish intensively in Costa Rica, and is now bi-lingual. In 2010, Jeff was a Distinguished Alumni recognized for membership in Gamma Sigma Delta honor society.

Post graduate school, Jeff invested his career in the agricultural seeds business. He  joined Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. where he spent 19 years in various roles, with major accomplishments including developing much of the sales training curriculum, managing the sales call transformation to include laptop computers paving the way for proposal and field-by-field selling, and leading a team studying best-in-class distribution models around the world. Jeff’s spent four years living in South Africa developing a 4P marketing department as the Africa Regional Marketing Manager. He later served as a go-to-market specialist across Latin America, Africa and Asia Pacific supporting the design and development of country sales teams. Jeff capped his career at Pioneer in Industry Relations providing outreach on new biotechnology traits coming to market.

Jeff joined Syngenta in 2010 as the NK Seeds Key Account Manager working with their largest national seeds retail account, Winfield Solutions. Later, as Head of Strategy and Growth for the Dealer Channel, he led the development of a new go-to-market strategy that resulted in a 70% turnover of their channel, launch of over 300 new start up seed businesses, and four consecutive years of market share growth. Jeff took direct line management responsibility as the Western Region Sales Manager leading a team of 650 people across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming. After Syngenta separated their seed and crop protection businesses, Jeff led the customer and sales services teams across their seed channels.

Jeff joined Benson Hill in September of 2019, serving as President of Benson Hill Seeds, a subsidiary of Benson Hill. His role expanded in 2020 to corporate Vice-President Grower Supply Chain and entails oversight of everything from the handoff of new varieties from research to the handover of grain to Benson Hills crush facilities.

Jeff and his wife Mary Kay live in Johnston, Iowa. They have five children, three of which have attended Iowa State University, including their youngest, a junior majoring in business. They are active in their local church, and enjoy cooking and travelling. Jeff is a voracious reader and budding wine sommelier, with a passion for changing the relationship and experience between growers and agribusinesses, as well as mentoring early and mid-career professionals.