Joe Dutra:  

Joseph Dutra was born in 1952, the grandson of Portuguese immigrant farmers who settled in the Sacramento, California area in the late 1800’s. He was raised on the family farm and as a young man moved on to become an honors graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Plant and Soil Science. In 1975, after earning his degree, Dutra returned to the Sacramento area and began farming with his brother. This continued until 1983, whereas Dutra took on the role of Senior Agronomist for The HADCO Project in Hail, Saudi Arabia. At that time, The HADCO Project was one of the largest wheat farming operations in the world outside of the United States. Despite his success as an international agri-businessman, Dutra found his personal life heading the opposite direction. With the stresses of international business taking toll on his marriage, he ultimately found himself divorced with two young children in his primary care. At his lowest moment, Dutra was without both a car and money or a job. Yet that’s when his entrepreneurial spirit came alive–he decided to take some risks and turned it all around, both professionally and personally–creating his own American Success Story. In 1987, Dutra helped launched Westec Inc, an agricultural consulting business educating South American farmers on successfully growing tomato crops (primarily in Brazil ). Westec expanded its operations in 1992 to include a Brazilian seed business and several years later further expanded by selling seed in both Russia and Moldavia. In1998 Westec also began selling hybrid corn seed in Saudi Arabia. Dutra, who had begun his international agri-business career in Saudi Arabia, had now come full circle. (Today, Dutra ...Expand for more