Keast Enterprises

Thomas Keast emigrated with his family from England in the 1870s to start a new life on a family farm near Macedonia, Iowa. Roughly a century later, Russell Keast followed in the family farming tradition by earning an Agricultural Mechanization degree from Iowa State University and returning to work on the farm. In 1985, Russ also began selling agricultural equipment, and soon became a dealer for numerous farm equipment manufacturers.

Throughout his agriculture career, Russ has supported and sponsored numerous community events and served on the Agriland FS Board of Directors for more than 30 years. Russ has received recognition numerous times for his service and ag industry expertise, including the Ed Kleen Stewardship Memorial Award for outstanding contribution to soil conservation, agriculture, and the community in 1992. With over three decades of farming and equipment sales experience, Russ continues to love agriculture and the people in it.

Family is also near and dear to Russ. In August 1984, he married his wife Diane, who earned her degree in Speech-Language Pathology in 1990 before transitioning later on to raising three children and assisting Russ in the business. Russ and Diane’s children include two daughters, Allison and Samantha, and one son, Grant.

Allison earned a Family Finance, Housing, and Policy degree from Iowa State University and is now a certified financial planner at TS Bank. Allison’s husband, Jonathan, graduated from Iowa State with an Agronomy degree, and now farms with his father. Samantha earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Iowa State in 2016 and married James Parsons in 2017. They now live in Denver, Colorado, where Samantha is a first-grade literacy paraprofessional and James is an electronics engineer. Grant graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with a degree in Business Management and Entrepreneurship, and now manages marketing efforts at Keast Enterprises.