KCS founder Dale Kopf was raised on a farm near Colton, Washington, not far from where his great grandfather first staked a homestead in 1891. For almost a century they made their living off the land, but that way of life disappeared for Dale's family in the 1970s when—like so many other small farmers of the day—they fell victim to tight economic times and the changing realities of modern agriculture.
With no farm to tend to, Dale's early jobs included work as a service representative for Yielder Drill in Spokane, Washington, a pioneer in the no-tillage equipment business. While at Yielder, Dale first began to see the benefits of modern no-tillage farming methods—fewer passes across the land meant lower operating costs for farmers, good yields, and potentially a lower impact on the soil.
In 1995, Dale received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, and a master's degree just five years later. He worked for Hewlett Packard, but always longed to be closer to home. In 2003, he joined a small consulting company in Lewiston, and later joined Schweitzer Engineering Labs in Pullman.
Dale's early experience with no-tillage farming and his later science education had only increased his desire to someday return to the land he had loved as a child. He wondered how he might be able to assist local farmers in adopting more efficient, profitable, and sustainable farming methods. The answer came from his farming past, which prompted Dale to launch Kopf Custom Seeding, LLC in the summer of 2009.