News from the Leopold Center Advisory Board | Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

News from the Leopold Center Advisory Board

2010-2011 board officers re-elected

The Leopold Center Advisory Board decided that current officers will serve a second year in their respective positions to provide continuity during Lois Wright Morton’s transition as Leopold Center interim director. Jennifer Steffen, a southeastern Iowa farmer who represents the State Soil Conservation Committee, will serve again as board chair through August 2011. John Olthoff, agricultural professor at Dordt College, will remain as vice-chair; and Bill Ehm, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, will continue to serve as member-at-large on the board’s executive committee. Dates for 2011 advisory board meetings will be March 3, June 1, September 15 and December 2.

Penney honored for 14 years of service

Leopold Center advisory board chair Jennifer Steffen offers congratulations and a commemorative plaque to Jim Penney, who has served on the board since 1996, including one term as chair. Penney is retired from the Heart of Iowa Cooperative and had represented the Agribusiness Association of Iowa on the board.

Meet Dan Frieberg

Dan Frieberg is in business to help farmers use data for good decisions and to be profitable. Healthy soil and clean water are part of the successful formula.

Frieberg and his wife Kate are co-owners and managers of Premier Crop Systems LLC in West Des Moines. The company helps its customers – commercial growers and agronomists who manage more than two million acres of farmland in several Midwestern states – understand and analyze precision ag data from yield monitors and numerous other sources. Frieberg will start a four-year term representing the Agribusiness Association of Iowa (AAI) on the Leopold Center Advisory Board.

“We need to move away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach because agriculture is part of a dynamic biological process,” he said. “If we’re going to manage nitrogen and maintain or build soil quality, we need to understand more about these biological processes.”

In many ways, we’ve only just begun, he said. “I’ve heard that the mapping of plant and animal genomes has been compared to the discovery of the periodic table for chemists. We might think we know a lot about biological systems when really we are just learning about the basic building blocks.”

He said the Leopold Center can help by providing seed money for researchers to explore these processes in novel ways. He said the Center’s work on local foods could fill a need that’s been around a long time, the need for additional high-value crops.
Frieberg said he remembers the Leopold Center’s early years. He was just starting work as the executive director for the Iowa Fertilizer and Chemical Association, later to merge with the Iowa Grain and Feed Association to become AAI. As a retailer and IFCA president, Frieberg remembers the Association moving to fund Fred Blackmer’s initial N-15 nitrogen research at ISU to address Iowa’s water quality problems. This was prior to passage of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act in 1987, which he characterizes as a research and education approach to solving environmental problems.

An Iowa native, Frieberg grew up on a small livestock/crop farm near Fairfield. In 1978, he received his B.S. in Farm Operations from Iowa State University, and he and Kate purchased a retail agribusiness that they operated until 1981. He was employed at AAI from 1989 to 1995, then was an independent business consultant until starting Premier Crop Systems in 1999.

The Friebergs live on a family horse-breeding farm south of Des Moines and have two adult sons.