Eminent Farmer
County: Mellette
Pat Adrian has been chairperson, board member, commissioner or treasurer of virtually every organization in South Dakota and the United States that supports the beef industry. She currently serves as the executive vice president of the South Dakota Beef Industry Council. Her biography reads like a litany of American agricultural initiatives.
Governors and U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture have appointed her to posts ranging from the South Dakota Agricultural Marketing and Development Commission to the USDA Agribusiness Committee for Caribbean Development. She chaired the National Advertising Committee that hired the first national advertising agency for the beef industry and supervised the first national television advertising program that has evolved into today's beef advertising campaign. Last weekend, she was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame. Pat and her husband Bob have four sons.