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News & Notes

Iowa Local Food and Farm Plan update

The Leopold Center is putting the final touches on a new Iowa Local Food and Farm Plan, requested by the Iowa legislature to create a more robust local and regional food and farm economy in the state.

The Center worked with partners to host 15 listening sessions between June and September to gather ideas for recommendations that should be included in the plan. The Center also analyzed results of more than 500 surveys that were returned about the plan. In total, the plan will have input from more than 1,000 Iowans from 95 of the state’s 99 counties, also numerous agencies and organizations.

The plan, which will include funding and policy recommendations, will be presented to legislators when they convene January 10 for the 2011 session. Recommendations in the plan also will be discussed at the quarterly meeting of the Regional Food Systems Working Group on January 20 at the Hy-Vee Conference Center in West Des Moines.

Leopold Center report receives award

Juls Design of Ankeny, Iowa received a 2010 American Graphic Design award from Graphic Design USA for the Leopold Center’s FY2009 annual report. The report featured pictures shot by former Center director Jerry DeWitt as part of his long-running second career in artistic agricultural photography. Mary Adams of the Center staff edited the publication.

New hort specialist begins work

Iowa State University Extension has hired Joe Hannan as the new horticulture field specialist to work with commercial fruit and vegetable growers in central and western Iowa. Hannan has a 2005 B.S. degree in horticulture from Iowa State University and has been working at ISU’s Muscatine Island Research Farm since 2006. He also managed the ISU vineyard at the Southeast Research Farm in Crawfordsville and had been researching an imbalance in soil potassium and magnesium as part of his work on a master’s degree. He is based at the Dallas County Extension office in Adel and will co-lead the Fruit and Vegetable Working Group. The Leopold Center is supporting two new positions in ISU’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that will work in local food systems research and education and food crop production. Interviews for the second position, a statewide specialist in vegetable and small fruit crop production, are scheduled in early 2011.

Pirog serves with new NGO

Leopold Center Associate Director Rich Pirog will be an ex-officio (non-voting) director of a new nonprofit organization, the Iowa Food Systems Council. The group is an outgrowth of discussions that had been taking place among a variety of stakeholders to re-establish a state food policy council as a non-profit. Other ex-officio members are Leopold Center advisory board members Bill Ehm (of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources) and Maury Wills (of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship). Details are available on the group’s website, www.iowafoodsystemscouncil.org

Cover crop resources directory

A directory of sources for cover crop seed, equipment and businesses that offer aerial application in Iowa has been updated by Practical Farmers of Iowa. The Cover Crop Business Directory was compiled by Sarah Carlson and Tomoko Ogawa for the Iowa Cover Crop Working Group, which is supported by the Leopold Center Ecology Initiative.