OTHER NEWS FROM THE LEOPOLD CENTER |
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Longtime ISU secretary joins Center staff
The newest member of the Leopold Center staff brings many years of university experience and strong organizational skills to her work as new office manager and secretary. Sherry Johnson joined the Center in August to fill a vacancy that arose when longtime staffer April Franksain left in May to take another job at ISU. Her duties include answering the telephone, fielding inquiries and requests for publications, providing secretarial support for the director, making arrangements for meetings and conferences, and helping staff with various mailings and other projects. She also will manage the Center’s extensive database. Johnson has worked at ISU for 29 years, most of that time as administrative assistant to the director of the Iowa State University Press. When ISU sold the operation in 2000 to Blackwell, a British publishing company, Johnson transferred to the administrative offices for ISU Extension. She also worked in the trademark division of the ISU Research Foundation. “I really like the idea of Iowans helping Iowans,” Johnson said. “It’s central to the mission of a land grant university and the reason that the Leopold Center was created. I want to be where my work makes a difference.” A lifelong resident of Boone, she also likes to keep busy away from the office. She is an active gardener, a member of a local quilting group and an elder in her church. She lives with her husband Terry, who is retired from the Des Moines Register production department. They have two grown children. Food ecolabels The Leopold Center’s work on developing food ecolabels, which tell consumers how far food has traveled and how much energy the transport required, was featured in the August 2 issue of Science News Online. Senior editor Janet Raloff explained work being done by the Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative leader Rich Pirog in her “Food for Thought” column (see <www.sciencenews.org/20030802/food.asp>). The Center’s “food miles” research has been covered by national media including the Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC News Online and the Sierra and Audubon magazines. The research reports are on the Leopold Center’s web site [see Publications, Papers and Speeches].
Grapes A report that explores potential markets among consumer buying clubs and churches for Iowa grown and processed grape juice is available from the Leopold Center. A competitive grant, sponsored by the Center, conducted surveys of 500 buying clubs in Iowa and surrounding states, and 120 randomly selected United Methodist, Church of Christ and Presbyterian churches in Iowa. The project, “Let the Vineyards Be Fruitful: A Study of the Potential Market for Iowa Grape Juice,” was conducted by Craig Chase, an Iowa State University extension specialist in Black Hawk County. Organic crops A report detailing the economic returns for organic crops has been published in a recent edition of the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture. The Leopold Center provided funds in 1998 to establish research plots at the ISU Neely-Kinyon Research Farm in southwest Iowa. The project compares identical hybrid varieties of corn and soybeans in conventional and organic methods. With additional funding from the USDA Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems Organic Agriculture Consortium, research is scheduled to continue for at least six more years. The report is on the web at: extension.agron.iastate.edu/organicag/researchreports/orgeconomics.pdf.
The Leopold Center has a longtime partnership with Practical Farmers of Iowa to fund a portion of its on-farm research program, which is highlighted during PFI’s 2003 Farm Field Days held in the summer and fall. Events throughout Iowa have attracted good crowds. Photographs were provided by PFI/ISU Extension Farming Systems coordinator Rick Exner.
Iowa and the EPA Jim Gulliford, administrator for Region 7 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will present, “The EPA’s perspective on agriculture and its relation to water quality in Iowa.” The speech will be at 4:10 p.m. in the Pioneer Room of the ISU Memorial Union on campus in Ames, with a reception at 3:30 p.m. Gulliford represents the EPA in a four-state region that includes Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Jules Pretty
Pretty is director of the Centre for the Environment and Society at Great Britain’s University of Essex. He has reviewed studies of more than 200 sustainable farming projects on 70 million acres in 52 countries. He is the author of eight books including Agri-Culture: Re-Connecting People, Land and Nature and his newest book, Guide to a Green Planet. His visit is sponsored by the Leopold Center’s Ecology Initiative and the ISU Bioethics Program. Other events to remember December 1 – Seminar by Arpad Pusztai and Susan Bardocz, the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland, “Genetically modified foods: Potential human health effects,” 4:10 p.m. followed by a reception, Gallery, ISU Memorial Union, Ames.
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