641-423-1918 info@v-ast.com

About Us Steve Weiss, President, 47 - Mr. Weiss is the President and Treasurer of VAST. Mr. Weiss was formally president of The Parks Companies, a group of related entities engaged in swine marketing, transportation and processing in North America. Mr. Weiss served as interim chief executive officer of Furnas County Farms (a 50,000-sow producer) from July 2003 to September 2004 through a troubled debt restructuring and sale of that company to Nebraska Pork Partners. Mr. Weiss was a founder and the chief financial officer of Iowa Select Farms, a 150,000-sow swine production company based in Iowa Falls, Iowa, from 1993 to 2001. Mr. Weiss was a founding partner of Roth & Company, a Des Moines, Iowa based CPA firm, and manager of middle market services for Deloitte & Touche from 1985 to 1990. Dr. Chad Hagen, Vice President – Technical Services, 51 – Dr. Hagen is the Vice President of VAST. Dr. Hagen has over 25 years of experience in the swine industry and is widely recognized as one of the industry’s top nutritionists, researcher and an expert in swine genetics. Dr. Hagen received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Animal Science from the University of Minnesota, specializing in swine nutrition. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1987, Dr. Hagen worked five years for Cargill, Inc., in various roles including research, product development, technical service and sales management. Dr. Hagen was a founder and senior manager at Iowa Select Farms from 1993 to 2000. From 2000 to 2007, Dr. Hagen was a vice president for Christensen Farms, a 180,000-sow swine production company based in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. During his career, Dr. Hagen has had the opportunity to work in all aspects of the swine business including nutrition, research, genetics, sow production and wean to market production and has established strong relationships with producers and suppliers throughout the U.S. and Canada. Dale Green, Manager of Procurement and Marketing, 52 – Dale has over 20 years experience in production agriculture and related businesses. Dale has an M.B.A. with emphasis in marketing and a B.S. in Finance. After spending several years working in a family business, he held various management roles for Cargill Animal Nutrition over 10 years including general management and commodity merchandising. Dale spent five years as a North American Product Marketing Manager for a business-to-business dairy ingredients company that included ingredient sourcing from Malaysia and Indonesia. Dale also served as director of the feed division for Christensen Farms, supervising feed manufacturing and ingredient procurement. Most recently, Dale has provided purchasing, risk management and feed production support to customers for TriTECH, a feed manufacturing company based in South Dakota. Wayne Cast, Director of Nutritional Services, 55 – Mr. Cast received his B.S and M.S. degrees from the University of Nebraska focusing on swine nutrition.  He has worked in the swine and feed industry for the past 30 years both domestically and internationally.  Wayne started his career in swine working in the operations side of the business where he produced purebred breeding stock and his first nutritional role was with Webel Feeds in Pittsfield Illinois, where he was a field nutritionist.  Wayne’s career was largely spent developing cost effective feeding programs for his customers, acting as technical support to sales staff in the field and training and developing people.  For the past 11 years, he has been the Director of Nutrition for Premium Standard Farms, a Missouri-based swine producer which produces over 4 million pigs per year.  In addition to his nutritionist responsibilities, Wayne was responsible for three feed mills producing over 800,000 tons of feed annually.

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