Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Interim Director: Give and take cycles and the Center's focus

Back to Leopold Letter Summer 2011

By MARK HONEYMAN, Interim director

For many years, I have been a consumer of the Leopold Center. My projects relied on Leopold Center funding. The Leopold Center provided sustainability education and leadership. Leopold Center reports, publications, conferences and speakers filled my professional thought processes. I was a Leopold Center “taker.”

Now is the time to give back. The call came to help out as interim director and the answer had to be “yes, how can I help?” I have suddenly become a Leopold Center “giver.” It is a pleasure and an honor to have this chance because of the deep respect that the Center generates.

When I met with the Leopold Center staff we talked about three things. First was stability.  In the waves of recent change at the Center, stability was important. Second was focus.  The Center will focus on its first priority – developing, delivering and awarding the 2011 grants program. The resources of the Leopold Center have never been needed more. And third, professionalism.  The Center will work as a cohesive team of professionals to keep the Leopold Center light shining brightly.

Institutions are like a lot of things. There is give and take, ebb and flow, stability and change, constancy and uncertainty. Those in agriculture understand cycles because they are the way of nature – spring and fall, planting and harvest, dormancy and growth, birth and death. And so here we are in a “give and take” cycle…and it all continues.

As a result, I have been thinking a lot more about the sustainability and resiliency of Iowa agriculture lately and the role of the Leopold Center. After listening, reading, observing and distilling all of this, I have developed a schematic of the Leopold Center’s scope (shown). The diagram has four equal parts – soil, water, farms and food with the Leopold Center intersecting each. For me, this represents the Leopold Center’s key areas of concentration. As we prepare for the next director, this will be the Center’s focus.

Back to Leopold Letter Summer 2011