Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Iowa State recognizes DeWitt for lifetime of service

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2009

Leopold Center director Jerry DeWitt has tried to visit at least 25 farms every year during his nearly 38-year career. “Farmers are great teachers and I’ve learned so much from them,” he says. “Sustainable agriculture is a wonderful combination of learning and sharing and making connections between people and the land.”

DeWitt is one of the newest recipients of the George Washington Carver Distinguished Service Award from the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The award was established to honor ISU alumni and friends for outstanding achievements in the agricultural, food, environmental, social and life sciences.

An ISU faculty member since 1972, DeWitt helped establish the first tenured organic agriculture faculty position at Iowa State and at a land grant university. He also guided development of ISU’s Integrated Pest Management program and has served as ISU Extension’s state sustainable agriculture coordinator since 1994. He became director of the Leopold Center in 2005 and has led the Iowa Learning Farm program since 2007.

The desire to create practical knowledge to help people also was a guiding force for George Washington Carver (1864-1943), the first black student and faculty member at Iowa State University. Carver helped Southern farmers by developing thousands of uses for crops they could grow, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes.

Linda O. McMurry, author of George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol, said Carver was a magnificent interpreter and humanizer of science who provided a critical link between researchers and lay audiences. “An evaluation of the true significance of his research is best reserved for the discussion of his philosophy and values,” she writes.

DeWitt’s passion for the land also is evident in his photographs, which can be seen in the photo galleries on the Leopold Center web site and in two books. People Sustaining the Land provides first-person narratives from 26 farmers, black-and-white photographs by documentary producer Cynthia Vagnetti and color photography by DeWitt. In 2003, he also was photo director for Renewing the Countryside—Iowa that was published as a Leopold Center special project.

“I have been changed by what I have seen, what I have heard. I have been a guest and student on a learning journey of people on the land,” DeWitt said after visiting farmers throughout the United States while on a faculty improvement leave in 1998. “These are the people who have sustained their land, their lives and ultimately me.”

DeWitt was recognized in October during the annual Iowa State University Alumni Association Honors and Awards ceremony. The George Washington Carver Distinguished Service Award also went to Charles Sukup for his contributions in the engineering of grain handling and storage equipment.

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2009