Pure Prairie Farms adds officers to Charles City administrative team

To The Press

Pure Prairie Farms in Charles City has made additions to its leadership team as it continues toward an anticipated production startup in July, the company announced.

The company named Bob Wolfe as chief operating officer, Santosh Venkataramanaapa as vice president of food safety, quality, and regulatory processes, and David Stanz as director of finance.

Each new member brings a long history of chicken and food industry experience, the company said.

“Though a young company, we are committed to acting like a larger, fully integrated chicken producer,” said Brian Roelofs, chief executive officer and president for Pure Prairie Farms.

“To realize our vision for the future, we knew we had to build a rock-solid foundation, today. That meant bringing the best and brightest aboard now to help get us there from the start,” he said.

Roelofs said Wolfe started his career at the ground level in live receiving for Zacky Farms, then worked his way through nearly every aspect of poultry production.

“Not only do we feel Bob is an excellent fit for our culture, we believe he also brings strong industry breadth, depth and knowledge to our team. As a person and professional, Bob is everything we wanted for the role and more,” said Roelofs.

Wolfe’s experience included key roles in sustainability, general management and business development at companies like Draper Valley, AgriStats, Petaluma Poultry, Pitman Farms and Foster Farms.

Venkataramanaapa, Pure Prairie Farms’ newly appointed vice president of food safety, quality and regulatory processes, comes to Pure Prairie Farms from Reno, Nevada-based Armand Agra, where he served as senior director of global food safety and quality assurance (FSQA) and regulatory compliance, and as senior manager of FSQA for prepared foods with Tyson Inc. prior to that.

Venkataramanaapa holds Master of Science degrees in food science and microbiology from Chapman University in Orange County, California, and Bangalore University, India, respectively.

Rounding-out the additions is David Stanz, director of finance for Pure Prairie Farms, who had previously worked in agriculture for more than 20 years, most recently with Minnesota-based Sparboe Farms and prior to that, GNP Co.

Since 2018, Stanz has played a key role on the Pure Prairie Farms acquisition team, and his appointment “boosts analytical capabilities for leadership and investors alike, as the company evolves to best leverage new opportunities in a competitive industry,” Roelofs said.

Since its purchase of the state-of-the-art former Simply Essentials processing plant at the end of 2021, Pure Prairie Farms has also worked to ensure the operational integrity of each plant area and worked on improvements with the purchase of land surrounding the facility and working with the city of Charles City to close the portion of Main Street in front of the plant to allow expansion, Roelofs said.