Jere and Emilee Gettle

Jere Gettle’s passion for farming developed early, and by the age of seventeen he was in business, selling seeds from his bedroom in Mansfield, Missouri. He didn’t set out to start an empire, but to save heritage plant varietals from being lost to genetically modified mega plants and to wave the banner for a way of life he saw rapidly disappearing. He began traveling to far off places, Asia, South America anywhere he could find and swap rare and unusual seeds, and started a seed catalog that now has 350,000 devoted customers. His seed company employs over 200 full time staff and includes a store, vegan restaurant, and pioneer village in his home town of Mansfield, Mo., as well as two other retail operations–the Seed Bank in Petaluma, California, and Comstock in Westerfield, Connecticut.