Iowan Named To 2018 Class Of Forbes 30 Under 30

A young Iowa hog farmer who updated the model of buying seed and farming supplies at a co-op by taking the process online has been named to the 2018 Forbes list as a "30 under 30 visionary." Brad McDonald, 29, is the co-founder of Agroy Inc.

McDonald, 29, is from Ryan, a Delaware County town of about 400 in northeast Iowa. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor's degree in science and he envisions his company as sort of "an Amazon for farmers," Forbes said.

"We're trying to build a platform to mimic a co-op system, except instead of being regionally based we use ecommerce," McDonald told Forbes. "It's not just farmers buying with their neighbors, it's farmers buying across the state and even across the U.S."

He said while the company, started last year, was created to benefit Iowa farmers and bring them economy-of-scale opportunities for their farming needs, Agroy has seen business extend to California and Canada.

Agroy began in Finland, where it has reached 8 percent of that country's agricultural business, McDonald told Forbes. He previously was a research analyst in commodities trading in New York City and St. Louis and later worked in agriculture finance at Wells Fargo in Chicago, where Agroy is based. He brought the company to the U.S. and splits his time between Chicago and the family hog farm in Ryan.

Forbes recognizes 600 "youthful visionaries" in 20 industries each year after receiving more than 15,000 nominations. McDonald, nominated by his brother, is honored on the Retail & Ecommerce list for "reinventing how we shop, online and off," a Forbes profile on McDonald said. You can read about all of the honorees on this year's 30 under 30 list here.