Highlight Events

Spencer Award Presentation
The Leopold Center will present the Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture to Iowa farmer and college instructor Laura Krouse on Friday, January 11 as part of the Practical Farmers of Iowa annual conference at the Airport Holiday Inn, Des Moines. The presentation will be at 7 p.m. during the Iowa Buffet Dinner, followed by the “King Corn” documentary. Guests are welcome but they must register by January 4.

PFI is offering Friday afternoon workshops on niche pork, grazing, beginning farmers and sustainable energy on small and midsize farms. The keynote will be Saturday, followed by 10 breakout sessions and an All-Iowa Meal. The conference theme is “Come to the Table,” featuring farmers who have been successfully supplying markets for grass-fed, organic and local products. For details, contact Cedar Johnson, (515) 232-5661x101, cedar@ practicalfarmers.org.

Shivvers Lecture to feature ag economist Ikerd
John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, will present the 2008 Shivvers Memorial lecture on February 24. His presentation is “Family Farms in an Era of Global Uncertainty.” The lecture is sponsored by the Leopold Center and the ISU Chapter of Gamma Sigma Delta Honorary Society for Agriculture.

Raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri, Ikerd received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. He has worked in private industry and spent 30 years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia and University of Missouri. Since retiring in early 2000, he has spent most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture.

He is the author of several books including Sustainable Capitalism, A Return to Common Sense, Small Farms are Real Farms, Acres USA, and forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press, Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture.

More complete background information and selected writings are available at http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/

Leopold Center initiatives host workshops in March
Learn what is happening in the Leopold Center’s two largest initiatives. This will be the third workshop for the Marketing and Food Systems Initiative, and the first such event in the Ecology Initiative.

The March 11 workshop at the Gateway Conference Center in Ames will feature presentations by projects currently funded by the Leopold Center and the Value Chain Partnerships project (also coordinated by the Center).