New sustainable agriculture award honors Iowa farm coupleA new award will honor the beliefs, innovations and stewardship of a rural Iowa couple who farmed for 40 years near Sioux City in Woodbury County. The Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture is part of a $20,000 gift to the Iowa State University Foundation in memory of Norman A. and Margaretha Geiger Spencer. It was given by their children, Robert Spencer of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and Elaine Spencer of Seattle. The Spencer family has asked the Leopold Center to present the award periodically to someone who—like their parents—is committed to the family farm in Iowa. The award also will recognize significant contributions to the advancement of ecological and economic practices that make agriculture sustainable and the family farm secure for the future. “It is a special honor for the Center to administer the Spencer Award,” said Leopold Center director Fred Kirschenmann. “I was struck by Robert and Elaine's tribute to their father that described how he managed his land. As soon as I read that, I knew he represented the kind of farming that Aldo Leopold would have endorsed. We are very proud to add this program to our work.” The amount of the award has not been determined. A call for nominations will be announced at a later date. The Spencer family has close ISU ties. Norman was a 1940 graduate in agricultural engineering and Margaretha, a 1944 graduate in home economics. Their son, Robert, earned his doctor of veterinary medicine in 1971 and is a veterinarian in La Crosse. Elaine Spencer, who practices law in Seattle, received a degree in food and nutrition from ISU in 1971, and a degree from Yale Law School in 1976. The Legacy of Norman and Margaretha Geiger SpencerFarming was both vocation and avocation for Norman Spencer. He approached it as a business, as a science, and as an art. Before the words 'organic farming' had been coined, he developed ways to use nature's own defense mechanisms instead of the pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics that other farmers increasingly depended upon. While other farmers often unsuccessfully attempted to fend off epidemics in their turkeys with heavy and continuous doses of antibiotics, he prevented epidemics by moving his turkeys to clean ground. As his next-to-last act of stewardship, the winter before he sold the farm, he had a bulldozer rebuild the terraces that protected the hills from erosion. That was an investment usually amortized over 20 years, from which he would see no return. It was one bit of extra security, however, that the next steward would at least meet his minimum standards. |