News and notes Summer 1999

Leopold Center Advisory Board member Wendy Wintersteen is heading the search committee to recommend candidates to succeed Center director Dennis Keeney, who will retire early in 2000. Other advisory board members on the 11-member committee are Mary Jane Olney, Jim Penney, Robert Sayre and Kurt Johnson. Also representing the Center is research coordinator Jeri Neal. Nominations of director candidates or questions about the search process should be directed to Wintersteen at (515) 294-7801.

The Leopold Center reached more than 1,550 farmers, educators and community leaders at 12 regional events during the first quarter of 1999. All events received partial funding from the Center's conference and workshop program. Participants learned about the Center and other sustainable agriculture projects that focused on local food systems, organic agriculture, integrated pest and nutrient management, value-added agriculture and grazing. One event was the popular Cornbelt Cow-Calf conference in Ottumwa. Producers suggested that the Center find new ways for them to get a larger portion of the consumer dollar, but wanted continued support of intensive grazing research.

A new statewide task force on local food systems appointed by the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge has strong ties to the Leopold Center. Appointed to the 16-member group are Advisory Board member Neil Hamilton from Drake University Law School; Rich Pirog, Center education coordinator; Kamyar Enshayan, a University of Northern Iowa assistant professor who manages a Center-funded project; and Gary Huber, of Practical Farmers of Iowa who oversees Field to Family, awarded a new Center grant (see insert). The task force chair reports to Mary Jane Olney at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship; Olney also is a Center advisory board member. The Task Force on Iowa Local Food Systems will suggest ways to boost sale and processing of Iowa-grown food.

Center director Dennis Keeney has been selected to speak at a national conference to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. The conference will be October 5-7 in Madison, Wis., and is sponsored by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

The Leopold Center is one of many voices being heard in the Conversations on Change program sponsored by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology in Ames with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Farm Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Incentive grants for additional work are funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the American Phytopathological Society, Entomological Society of America, Entomological Foundation and the Weed Science Society of America. More information is available on the program web site at .

The Leopold Center kept its spot as one of 1,400 organizations worldwide that are models for innovative environmental programs. To be included in Renew America's Environmental Success Index, the Center was evaluated on several criteria, and recommended by other environmental leaders. The Index is on the Web at www.crest.org/renew_america.

"One who observes the landscape from Highway 30 east or I-35 north sees a portrait that is bleak-sober in Leopold's terms-and has little diversity," Leopold Center director Dennis Keeney told an audience of high school juniors and seniors interested in conservation careers. "The rug needs reweaving with buffer strips, wetlands and habitat for wildlife." Keeney was the 1999 Earth Day speaker at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls. The complete text, which quotes Aldo Leopold extensively, is on the Leopold Center's web site.

In May, Dennis Keeney addressed a workshop in Maryland about using the Leopold Center as a model for a center that will coordinate multi-disciplinary research in agriculture, natural resources and the environment. The new center would be a joint project of the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station.