As the adage goes, we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and there’s no denying that countless individuals across the agriculture sector, the country, and beyond have stood to benefit from the quiet wisdom and visionary innovation of my father, Lowell Broin.
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In Loving Memory of Lowell Broin October 31, 1938 – May 1, 2024
It is both a privilege and a unique responsibility to share the extraordinary life of my dad, but it is no small task to attempt to capture his legacy using only a few paragraphs. Although he was, outwardly, perhaps the most modest and unassuming man I’ve ever known, he was so much more than a simple description can convey.
If you knew my dad from a distance, you would have thought he was a humble, hardworking, and patient man, and you’d be right. But to those of us who knew him well, he was much more than that. He was a remarkable individual who was unique in so many ways — but he never would have taken credit for it.
Dad was born at home on the farm near Kenyon, Minnesota, on October 31, 1938, and grew up in a world without the conveniences many of us take for granted, like running water and indoor plumbing. He attended country school and then Kenyon High School. Later, he was in the Army Reserves, and in 1958, he married my mother, Judy. Although his childhood was not without its challenges, he was always a man of unwavering faith and was a lifelong member of Holden Church, which his ancestors helped found and where he now rests peacefully.
Dad didn’t start with much. He farmed with his father and took over the farm in the wake of his passing. He moved a small house onto the homestead where my three siblings and I were born. We all slept in one small bedroom, and I remember well the roof leaking each time it rained.
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It was a humble beginning, but necessity breeds invention. Dad was resilient, and his innovative spirit got him far. He wasn’t just a great farmer; he was also an inventor, an engineer, and a builder. He designed and built our two-story house over the original one, along with most of the buildings and even the silos on our farm, many times using reclaimed materials.
Although he only had a high school education, he could build almost anything. And everything he built was done right and withstood the test of time, including our dairy barn and hog barn. I remember asking him once how he learned to build things, to which he replied, "When I was a kid, we didn’t have any money after the Depression, but we had a lot of time. So we tore down buildings for the used lumber, and I learned how to put them back together."
His ingenuity didn't stop at structures; he also built a biomass system on our farm to dry corn using corn stalks and, later, old railroad ties. He built a swimming pool from silo staves and designed a solar system to heat it.
But his crowning achievement was perhaps the bioethanol plant he built on our farm.
At the time, there was too much grain in the world and not enough market to utilize it, so Dad and other farmers were being paid by the government to set aside 20% of their acres. I recall him saying often, “It’s such a waste growing nothing on that land.” So, he decided to turn his corn into bioethanol.
Even though all of the other farm-scale plants he was aware of were losing money or being forced into bankruptcy, and the experts said such a venture couldn’t be profitable, Dad once again relied on his faith and determination. The farm plant came online in 1985, and although it didn’t make a lot of money, it taught us many valuable lessons.
After running the farm-scale plant for two years, he and my older brother attended an auction to buy equipment at a bankrupt plant in Scotland, SD. It went for such a low price they bought the whole facility – and the rest, as they say, is history. The three of us became partners in this new venture, named Broin Enterprises, and my younger brother would join later. The early years were tough, with Dad guaranteeing the debt and putting immense trust in us to make the business successful.
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I was just 22 when I moved to Scotland to become the general manager, and Dad’s faith in me continues to humble and motivate me to this day. To say running that first plant was challenging would be an understatement. We faced fires, an explosion, and equipment failures that almost bankrupted us. Yet, each time, we found a way to prevail. We grew rapidly, and over the next 16 years, we built 34 plants in seven states, with over 6,000 farmers investing in our projects. In all, we created 52 different companies in less than 20 years.
Dad’s bold idea to use the corn on our farm to make fuel — which some neighbors said was “crazy” — was the first step in what has become the largest biofuel company in the world. Today, POET uses one billion bushels of corn annually to produce three billion gallons of bioethanol, 14 billion pounds of animal feed, and one billion pounds of corn oil. 2,400 people have careers at POET, 40,000 farmers deliver grain to our facilities, and the families, communities, and states that surround our locations have benefited greatly.
But that’s not the best part of the story. The success of our bioprocessing plants encouraged other farmers to follow suit and build more than 100 plants in rural areas throughout the Corn Belt, spurring an agricultural renaissance. Today, five billion bushels of corn are used each year in the U.S. for bioethanol production, two and a half times more than we export.
The growth of the bioethanol industry not only eliminated the set-aside acres that motivated Dad in the first place; over three decades, it tripled the price of farm commodities, more than doubled the value of farmland, and made farming profitable not just in the U.S., but across the globe, changing millions of lives and improving the world in ways he could never have imagined.
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And yet, despite the success Dad witnessed after building that first plant on the farm, he remained as humble as they come, always a Minnesota farm kid at heart. Perhaps his defining trait was his remarkable patience, which we saw regularly, whether he was facing issues on the farm or, on occasion, challenges created by his kids (and later, his grandkids). He took great pleasure in the simple things in life: a game of cards, a quick nap, or a good chocolate chip cookie.
But what stands out most about my dad is the great father and grandfather he was to his family. At the end of the day, I believe that’s how we should all define success – not by the things we acquire, the milestones we achieve, or the money we make, but by the people we impact. Very few individuals have the privilege to touch as many lives as Lowell did, and I can only imagine he was greeted in heaven with the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
