News & Notes | Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

News & Notes

RFP results

The Leopold Center’s Summer 2010 Request for Pre-proposals (RFP) resulted in 54 submissions: 23 in marketing and food systems, 19 in ecology, 4 in policy and 8 cross-initiative projects. Leopold Center advisory board members and staff have requested full proposals from investigators of 26 pre-proposals. Final funding decisions will be announced in early 2011.

Leopold Center invests in local food system positions

The Leopold Center is sharing the cost to support two positions in ISU’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that will work in local food systems research and education and food crop production. The Leopold Center will contribute $80,000 annually for three years from funds provided by an anonymous gift to the Center.

One position is for a state specialist to conduct an applied research and extension program in vegetable and small fruit crop production. This person will join two horticulture professors who work in commercial fruit production and six positions involved in fruit and vegetable research and demonstration at ISU’s Muscatine Island, Armstrong and Horticulture Station research farms. The second position is for a field specialist in central and western Iowa to focus on vegetable and small fruit production and handling. That person will join a food crops horticultural specialist who works in eastern Iowa. Search committees are in the process of interviewing candidates for the positions.

New communications intern

Amy Thompson, a senior at the ISU Greenlee School of Journalism and Communications, has joined the Leopold Center as communications intern beginning in the fall 2010 semester. She is a native of southern California but her family now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her academic emphasis is in public relations and she recently completed an internship at Ackermann PR of Knoxville, which is ranked as one of the top 100 public relations firms in the United States.

Another life cycle assessment study

The Leopold Center has collaborated on a second Life Cycle Assessment study of system-wide environmental impacts related to livestock production. The most recent study looked at pork production − both high- and low-profitability operations in a conventional commodity system (confined animal feeding operations) and in deep-bedded hoop barns in a niche production system. LCA was used to compare the two systems in terms of their cumulative energy use, ecological footprint, greenhouse gas emissions and emissions that can contribute to water quality. Results have been published in the 2010 Agricultural Systems journal. A Question and Answer document about the project and journal article are available here.

Winter wheat and red clover

Fields of winter wheat underseeded with red clover are not a familiar sight in Iowa, but could become a favored rotation if energy costs continue to rise. Jeremy Singer, agronomist with the USDA’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, is looking at different cover crop systems that could work for Iowa farmers. More about Singer’s research is featured in a new On the Ground with the Leopold Center video.