Bits & Pieces
Bite-sized nuggets from the business beat
Stine Among Great Innovators
Forbes magazine has named Harry Stine, the founder and head of Stine Seed in Adel, Iowa, as one of America’s 250 Great Innovators.
The magazine described Stine as a “farm boy turned seed-genetics savant” who has made a fortune licensing corn and soybean genetics to multinationals such as Monsanto and Syngenta.
Stine was ranked No. 34 among the 250 innovators.
“If you’re eating soy,” Forbes wrote, “it’s probably from one of his seeds.”
Trump Enters Roundup Rift
German agribusiness giant Bayer has been swatted silly with lawsuits over its popular weedkiller Roundup.
The company has paid tens of billions of dollars to settle court complaints that contended the product’s labels didn’t warn of potential cancer caused by Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate.
Yet Roundup, like bedbugs and cockroaches, has been proven hard to exterminate.
Last year, an Iowa bill that would have protected ag chemical manufacturers from “failure to warn” lawsuits stalled in the Iowa House. (Glyphosate is produced at a Bayer Monsanto plant in Muscatine, about 150 miles east of the Iowa State Capitol.)
Bayer has taken its cause to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a favorable ruling could shield Roundup from lawsuits in state courts.
Bayer also announced a proposed nationwide settlement to resolve existing and potential future lawsuits. The payments would total up to $7.25 billion.
And in the latest twist, President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday to accelerate production of glyphosate. Trump’s order invoked the Defense Production Act, The New York Times reported, with Trump saying glyphosate is “critical to the national defense.”
“Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system,” he said.
Trump’s executive order put his Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an awkward situation.
In 2018, as a plaintiff’s lawyer, Kennedy played a role in winning a landmark $289 million jury verdict against Monsanto.
Now, as a member of Trump’s cabinet, Kennedy dutifully backed his boss in a statement: “Donald Trump’s executive order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” The Times reported.
The turn of events did not sit well with so-called MAHA Moms — women who have supported Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement, according to The Times.
News Mogul Makes News
Time will tell how well Florida billionaire David Hoffmann manages the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain in Davenport. One thing’s already certain, however. The man knows how to generate headlines.
Biz Whispers, in a Jan. 4 column, wrote about Hoffmann becoming the largest shareholder of Lee Enterprises and his assuming chairmanship of the board of directors.
The company owns more than 70 newspapers, including the Mason City Globe Gazette, the Muscatine Journal, the Council Bluffs Nonpareil, the Quad-City Times, the Sioux City Journal and the Waterloo Courier. Other holdings of note include the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
In that Jan. 4 column, a representative for the Hoffmann Family of Companies said there were no plans to relocate the Lee headquarters from Davenport.
That was then, this is now.
Hoffmann, as keynote speaker of a St. Louis Business Journal event on Feb. 5, said he is considering moving the headquarters to St. Louis.
The Missouri native also told the audience that “people aren’t in love” with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and “we have some ideas to change that.” He went on to explain that the newspaper is “a little too left” and that “it needs to be in the middle.”
Finally, Hoffmann, whose company is working to complete the purchase of the National Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Penguins, said he hopes to also acquire a Major League Baseball team — the St. Louis Cardinals.
Taxpayers Lax in Filing
U.S. taxpayers were in no rush to file their income tax returns in the first week of the filing season, the IRS said.
The federal tax collection agency received 23,351,000 individual income tax returns as of Feb. 6, compared with 23,589,000 on Feb. 7, 2025.
The good news: Taxpayers were seeing bumps in their refund checks. The average refund was $2,290 per taxpayer as of Feb. 6, compared with $2,065 on Feb. 7, 2025.
Literally Sick of Debt
Forty-four percent of Americans think their household debt is affecting their health, according to a household debt survey report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The new data and an analysis by WalletHub showed U.S. households set another record for total debt in 2025 of $18.78 trillion.
Forty-seven percent of Americans say their household can’t handle more debt, yet one in three people expect their household debt to increase in the next 12 months.
Todd Snyder Watch
Biz Whispers got a nice note from Todd Snyder, the Iowa native who gained fame in New York City as a menswear designer.
A Feb. 1 column told the story of Snyder’s role in the stylish makeover of a 1998 Land Rover vehicle.
This week a reader shared a tidbit from Esquire magazine about Snyder’s collaboration with British watch brand Aera. The team has produced two time pieces that are iterations of Aera’s D-1 diver watches.
The Aera x Todd Snyder D-1 Diver is available in two colors, the Whiteout and the Blackout.
Snyder explained in statement that the Swiss-made watches’ color palette was “inspired by an off-road expedition through Icelandic landscapes. Blackout captures the depth of obsidian volcanic sands, while Whiteout reflects the stark, clean profile of glacial waters.”
The watches are priced at $2,898. Each version is limited to 25 individually numbered pieces.
Itty-Bitty Bits
Walgreens pink slips. Drugstore retailer Walgreens is laying off at least 600 workers, the website RetailDive reports. The cuts will include 159 employees in Texas, where the company’s Houston distribution center will be closed. Another 469 employees will be laid off in Illinois at the company’s headquarters.
Here’s my number, so call me maybe. Tom Curtis, president of Burger King, has taken the unusual steps of publishing his phone number and fielding customer feedback calls at least four hours a day.
Butterball seeks year-round relevance. The poultry brand is looking to refresh its brand image and expand awareness beyond the holiday turkey season. Its new agency, Carmichael Lynch, has been challenged to make the brand’s products relevant year-round.
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