Biography

Dale A Rodman
Secretary of Agriculture

Dale A. Rodman was appointed secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture by Governor Sam Brownback in January 2011.

A native Kansan, Rodman was born in Eureka and grew up on a diversified farm and ranch near Toronto. His family raised cattle, wheat, soybeans, hay, and sorghum. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in feed milling from Kansas State University in 1963. He later graduated from the Minnesota Management Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Rodman served as an agribusiness executive in national and international agriculture development and management for the majority of his career. He worked for 37 years at Cargill, Inc. and gained experience in a number of agribusiness industries including milling, grain product processing, and meat slaughter and processing. Rodman spent 4 years as president of Tramco, Inc. a manufacturer of heavy duty dry bulk conveying systems located in Wichita. During his career, he lived in Europe and Asia and worked in over thirty countries.

In the 1990s, he worked with then-Secretary of Agriculture Sam Brownback as a member of an agricultural advisory board.

Rodman left retirement at the request of Governor Brownback to serve the Kansas agricultural industry. He is personally committed to building Kansas agriculture and developing opportunities to grow the state's agricultural economy. In addition, he is focused on strengthening the Department of Agriculture and revitalizing the Department's focus on serving Kansas' producers and consumers.

Rodman and his wife Ronda live in Topeka. His son Thomas is a general manager for Cargill in Memphis, Tennessee. His daughter Chantel Mandel is a deputy director in communications at Bayer Healthcare in San Francisco. He has 4 grandchildren.