2006 Minnesota Business Hall of Fame

During the 1990s, Rosen’s Diversified sought further diversification by starting businesses in bottled water and agribusiness software. All have been sold as the company returned to its focus on beef processing and chemical distribution. The other operations, Rosen says, “never seemed to work or fit in quite as well” as he had hoped.

Just as there are fewer farmers than 20 years ago, so there are fewer competitors in Rosen’s markets. For instance, many chemical distributors have sold out or closed shop. Rosen’s Diversified has grown in large part by acquiring several of these departing firms. Rosen suspects that chemical consumption will continue to decline as seed technologies continue to progress, though it won’t disappear. In meat processing, meanwhile, “there are just six major meat-processing firms in the United States,” Rosen notes. The chief challenge for those remaining firms is a cattle shortage. The mad-cow scare a few years back caused Asian countries to close their markets to American beef, and he also believes the U.S. ban on Canadian cattle has hurt cattle numbers for slaughter.

But perhaps Rosen’s greatest concern—one he shares with his wife, State Senator Julie Rosen—is the future of greater Minnesota, whose population is aging and shrinking. “That’s our biggest challenge,” he says. “How are we going to run our infrastructure, how are we going to run our schools?” Even with a stabilized farm economy, rural Minnesota can take nothing for granted. Neither has Tom Rosen.