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Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a longtime leader in national and
international sustainable agriculture, shares an appointment as Distinguished Fellow for the
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University
and as President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in
Pocantico Hills, New York. He also oversees management of his
family's 3,500-acre certified organic farm in south central North
Dakota and is a professor in the ISU Department of Religion and
Philosophy.
Kirschenmann holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of
Chicago, and has written extensively about ethics and agriculture.
He has held numerous appointments, including the
USDA's National Organic Standards Board and the National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal
Production operated by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and
funded by Pew Charitable Trusts.
He served as the Leopold Center's second director from July 2000 to
November 2005, when he was named a Distinguished Fellow. He joined
the board of the Stone Barns Center in 2004 and was elected
president in 2007. In January 2008, he assumed a half-time
appointment at Stone Barns, dividing his time between Iowa and New
York, to explore ways that rural and urban communities can work
together to develop a more resilient, sustainable agriculture and
food system.
Kirschenmann also is a board member for the Food Alliance, Silos and
Smokestacks National Heritage Area, and the Nature Institute. He chairs and is a charter member of the Whiterock Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that manages a
1,300-acre conservation area in west-central Iowa. Kirschenmann helped convene and continues to be active
on Agriculture of the Middle, a multi-state task
force that focuses on research and
markets for midsize American farms. He is a review editor for the
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems journal, formerly the
American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, and serves on the
editorial board of the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture.
His academic credits include several years teaching and
as administrator, culminating in a position as academic dean at
Curry College in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1976 he returned to the
family farm when his father became ill. By 1980, the farm was
certified organic, one of the early operations to make the
transition. The farm is a natural prairie livestock grazing system
that combines a nine-crop rotation of cereal grains, forages, and
green manure.
Kirschenmann Family Farms has been part of a number of research
studies. It also has been featured in national publications
including National Geographic, the Smithsonian,
Audubon, Business Week, the LA Times and
Gourmet magazine. In 1995, Kirschenmann was profiled in an
award-winning video, "My Father's Garden," by Miranda Productions,
Inc.
In 1978, Kirschenmann helped organize North Dakota Natural Farmers
that later became the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture
Society. He helped found and for 10 years was president of Farm
Verified Organic, Inc., an international private certification
agency.
In 2001, Kirschenmann received the Seventh Generation Research Award
from the Center for Rural Affairs for his work in sustainable food
and farming systems. He also was named a 2002 Leader of the Year in
Agriculture by Progressive Farmer publications. His essay,
"Ecological Morality: A New Ethic for Agriculture," appears in
Agroecosystems Analysis, a monograph published by the American
Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and the Soil
Science Society of America.
The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture was created by the
Iowa Legislature to develop sustainable agricultural practices that
are both profitable and conserve natural resources.
May 2008
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