Growing up on his family’s farm in Southwestern Minnesota, Dean Oestreich says he developed early on a deep respect for Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.

His father was a sales representative for the company, eventually becoming a district manager. Oestreich “liked the integrity of the firm,” he said, and spent a summer working at Pioneer’s laboratories while studying agronomy at the University of Minnesota. He thought so much of the experience that he snapped up a job offer made at his graduation in 1974, finishing school on a Wednesday and reporting for work the following Monday.

Now, as Oestreich takes the reins as the seed company’s 10th president, he is steering a much different firm from the one he joined. Competition continues to drive spending to develop new varieties of seeds, so much so that Pioneer, the world’s largest seed maker, today spends 100 times more on research than it did when Oestreich joined. The higher stakes means that Pioneer must be more careful than ever to make the right choices on where to invest its money, while staying close enough to customers to deliver the products they want.

“What’s important is making the right choices on the research side,” he said. “Second, we have to make sure we’re really working with our customers. That’s absolutely critical to our success.”

Oestreich’s wide range of experiences built at the company over three decades – which include stints as a scientist, information management specialist, salesman and head of global operations – promise to strengthen the glue between Pioneer’s different divisions.

And he is taking over while the company is on an upswing. Sales have topped $2 billion in each of the past two years, and both Oestreich and his boss, J. Erik Fyrwald, say the company is on track to deliver another strong performance this year. Pioneer plans to introduce 74 new varieties of corn hybrids in 2004, more than it ever has. It also plans to begin selling 23 new soybean varieties.

“Perhaps I am an integrator,” said Oestreich, 52, who succeeds Rick McConnell. “I understand our business, know our customers and how we need to pull all of this together.”

Oestreich, who as part of his promotion was named a vice president and general manager at DuPont, is also taking over two weeks after the New York Times published a front page story alleging that Pioneer and its chief rival, Monsanto Co., may be conspired to fix prices in the mid-1990s. McConnell was one of four executives named in the article as having taken part in questionable talks between the two companies.

Both companies strongly denied any impropriety, and Oestreich said McConnell’s decision to retire was announced more than a month ago to Pioneer employees. McConnell’s retirement was announced publicly last week amid a larger announcement from parent DuPont Co. detailing management changes that seek to focus DuPont and its subsidiaries on countries and projects that have high potential for growth.   McConnell had been president since 2000.

“They’re false,” Oestreich said of the Times’ allegations. “They’re off-base and false. I would call the article an attack that is not well-founded.”

Oestreich began at Pioneer as a breeder of corn seed, the same position that McConnell had when he started at the Des Moines-based company. Oestreich remained on the science side of the Pioneer for 12 years, holding jobs of increasing responsibility.

From there, he moved to information management. Computers were used by the company early on by Pioneer’s scientists, but it was Oestreich and others who began applying them to the business side of the company in the 1980s to improve management efficiency. He then moved to production operations, learning how the company’s seeds were produced on a mass scale.

In the production side of the business, which is Pioneer’s largest division, Oestreich grew to take on responsibility for larger areas, becoming vice president in charge of operations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Pacific regions in 1999. In 2001, he was named vice president for global supply management. In 2002, he took over as head of marketing and sales in North America, a market that constitutes 70 percent of Pioneer’s sales.