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Daniel Smith is an accomplished poet, essayist, public speaker and agribusiness executive with a lifelong commitment to agriculture, the environment and rural communities.

Smith operated his family’s dairy farm in northwestern Illinois for three decades, where with his wife, Cheryl, they raised their sons, Austin, Ryan and Levi. With the practicality of a farmer and the syntax of a poet, he has authored three books of poetry (Home Land, Bottom Dog Press; Fatherland, Longhouse Press; and Ancestral, Water’s Edge Press). His poems and essays have appeared nationwide in such publications as Narrative, Midwestern Gothic, Seems, Tundra, Midwest Quarterly, among others. 

Smith currently serves as President and CEO of Cooperative Network, and as a director of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. He formerly served as Administrator of the Division of Agricultural Development, where he directed the state’s domestic and international agricultural marketing programs.  He is the former CEO of Midwestern BioAg, a national farm supply company.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he and Cheryl live on a small farm in the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin, where he writes, and together, they enjoy reading, hiking and their grandchildren.