Kirk Messick

Kirk Messick graduated with a degree in agricultural business in 1983. Messick enrolled as an economics major, but made the change to agricultural business because of his wide-ranging exposure to agriculture growing up in Northern California. His senior project, “The Value of Domestic Rice Market,” was a fitting entry into a career in the field. Soon after graduation, Messick accepted a packaging manager position with Pacific International Rice and continued to advance within the industry. He accepted a domestic sales manager position with Farmers Rice Cooperative (FRC) in 1988, eventually getting promoted to senior vice president in 2005. He declined the CEO position in 2011 and retired in 2016, whereupon he established Messick International Trade & Consulting LLC in January 2017. During Messick’s career, he was instrumental in successfully restructuring the FRC business model and was part of the Rice Industry Trade Policy negotiating team for Asia, in addition to helping lead the Industry Global Promotional Strategies. At Cal Poly, Messick was a member of the Delta Tau fraternity, a member and scholarship recipient of the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA), and a member of the Alpha Omega Honorary Agriculture Fraternity. He reconnected with Cal Poly in 2003 when former FRC Board Chairman and mentor Al Montna asked Messick to join the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences’ Dean’s Advisory Council, serving as a member starting in 2003 and as chair from 2010-16. Messick met his wife, Mary, (Agricultural Business, ’83) in an agriculture sales class at Cal Poly, and all three of their children — Christopher (Agricultural Business, ’09), Trevor (Agricultural Business, ’11) and Jourdan (Agricultural Business, ’14 ) — graduated from Cal Poly.