The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture explores and cultivates alternatives that secure healthier people and landscapes in Iowa and the nation.
Frontpage Features Archive
Meet our newest Spencer Award winners
Jan Libbey and Tim Landgraf (center) received the 2012 Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture on Friday night during annual conference activities for Practical Farmers of Iowa. Now in its 10th year, the award is among the largest of its kind in Iowa and includes a $1,000 check.
Presenting the award was Laura Jackson, biology professor at the University of Northern Iowa and member of the Leopold Center's advisory board. Jackson has written about Libbey and Landgraf's One Step at a Time farm in her book, The Farm as Natural Habitat. Libbey and Landgraf have worked to re-establish wetlands and other wildlife habitat on their 132 acres adjacent to East Twin Lake forest. With them is Leopold Center Director Mark Rasmussen, who hopes to visit their farm when prairies are in bloom.
Fresh veggies in January
Buttercrunch bib lettuce and Italian large leaf basil are almost ready to harvest in an Iowa State greenhouse where students are working with extension specialist Allen Pattillo. Thanks to a special project grant from the Leopold Center's Cross-cutting Initiative, Pattillo has set up an experiment that explores the use of aquaponics -- the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics to produce an efficient and economically/ecologically viable form of agriculture. In this system he raises Nile tilapia in the recirculating water used to grow the lettuce and basil. More about this project
Welcome, 2013!
Happy New Year from all of us at the Leopold Center!
Something to ponder from Aldo Leopold's "Conservation" essay notes [Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold, Oxford University Press, 1993]
When one considers the prodigious achievements of the profit motive in wrecking land, one hesitates to reject it as a vehicle for restoring land. I incline to believe we have overestimated the scope of the profit motive. Is it profitable for the individual to build a beautiful home? To give his children a higher education? No, it is seldom profitable, yet we do both. These are, in fact, ethical and aesthetic premises which underlie the economic system. Once accepted, economic forces tend to align the smaller details of social organization into harmony with them.
Peace on earth, good will to all
A harmonious relation to land is more intricate, and of more consequence to civilization, than the historians of its progress seem to realize. Civilization is not, as they often assume, the enslavement of a stable and constant earth. It is a state of mutual and interdependent cooperation between human animals, other animals, plants, and soils, which may be disrupted at any moment by the failure of any of them. -- Aldo Leopold, ”The Conservation Ethic”
This is Lake LaVerne on the Iowa State campus, photographed by McBreen, ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the day after last week's snowstorm and blizzard.
Naughty or nice?
This female snowy owl seems to be checking everyone's intentions. Jeff Klinge spotted her on a power line near his northeast Iowa farm in early November. He said she was "very cooperative" and kept looking the other way until he talked to it. "She looked right at me, hard to believe but true," he said. "When I turned to leave, the owl flew away."
ISU Extension wildlife specialist Rebecca Christoffel said adult snowy owls stand 20 to 27 inches tall and typically perch on haystacks, fence posts and knolls or dunes. Their main source of food on the tundra is lemmings; while in Iowa they settle for mice and other small mammals.
She said a temporary shortage of food is driving some snowy owls farther south this year, as it did a year ago. There have been 20 Iowa sightings to date this season, compared to 75 a year ago. She said Iowans should report sightings to Steve Dinsmore, ISU Natural Resource Ecology and Management, cootjr@iastate.edu, so their movement can be tracked. Details at: http://ebird.org/ebird/map/snoowl1
2012 Spencer Award winners
Tim Landgraf and Jan Libbey are the 2012 winners of the Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture. They will receive the award on January 11 during annual conference activities of Practical Farmers of Iowa, where Tim has been president since 2009. It has been a tradition of the Spencer Award, now in its 10th year, to honor those who receive the award by presenting it to them among their peers. Landgraf and Libbey own and operate One Step at a Time Gardens near Kanawha in Hancock County. They have a 150-member CSA enterprise and a pastured-poultry operation.
More about the Spencer Award See news release about this year's winners
Jan talks about their operation in this 2009 photo gallery
How lovely art thou branches
Andy Johnson admits that the best crop at Oneota Slopes Farm is "kids," next to the 500 or so naturally grown Christmas trees harvested each year for customers of nearby co-ops and health food stores. Johnson, his wife Emily and his parents Pat and Paul Johnson specialize in growing trees without insecticides, fungicides or fertilizers in diverse plantings of unmowed ground cover, grasses and prairie plants. They deliver cut trees locally, and also manage a choose-and-cut operation each year prior to the holiday. Their 140-acre farm is nestled along the Upper Iowa River about eight miles from Decorah. They also sell pasture-raised beef and lamb. Leopold Center Director Mark Rasmussen recently met with the Johnsons and visited several other businesses to learn more about sustainable agriculture in northeast Iowa.
Cleaning up Iowa's water
Comment period extended to January 18 -- Details [Iowa DNR website]
Iowans have until January 4 to review and comment on how the state could reduce nutrient loading from farms and sewage treatment plants in order to improve Iowa's water quality and to help shrink the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy was developed over the past two years by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and Iowa State University. The report in three parts reviewed technology, science and policy considerations for reducing nutrients in surface water.
The Leopold Center has conducted research on many of the practices to improve water quality that were outlined in the report by the science team. Most recently, a farming system that results in improved water quality (among many other benefits) has captured national interest. More here.
The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, and how to provide comments, are on the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences website at www.nutrientstrategy.iastate.edu. [Photo taken at the Bear Creek research site in Story County]
Happy Thanksgiving
These two baby chickens are thankful to have a turkey for an adopted mom. The turkey is named Butterball, who became a family pet a couple years ago when its owners changed their Thanksgiving menu after raising the bird from a chick.
‘Ubiquitous, underappreciated but indispensable’
That’s how ISU Emeritus Professor John Pesek describes soil in his guest column for the Leopold Letter. Distinguished Fellow Fred Kirschenmann also talks about soil, From Dirt to Lifeline. The first-ever Global Soil Week is planned November 18-22, when soil scientists meet in Berlin to highlight soil as “the pillar of sustainability.” [Flickr image by John Kelley, North Carolina State University Soil Science]
Check out these fun soil resources: Don't Call It Dirt [Iowa Learning Farms video]; Unlock the Secrets [Natural Resources Conservation Service]; Dig It! [Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History] and I Love Soil [Soil Science Society of America]
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