Annual report celebrates ‘Horizons’
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The role of the Leopold Center, in my opinion, has been pivotal at a crucial time for sustainable agriculture. The Center has served to encourage (perhaps demand)interdisciplinary work—a critical element for agriculture to become truly sustainable. … Perhaps most importantly, the Leopold Center has emphasized and supported getting results out to farmers and other land owners who can actually use it on the land so that important work doesn’t just sit in some obscure academic journal. – Jim Pease, Extension Wildlife Specialist, Iowa State University
Comments from Pease and other partners and investigators are sprinkled throughout the 20th anniversary annual report from the Leopold Center. Entitled “Horizons,” the report takes note of the distance the Center has traveled since it was created under the auspices of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act in 1987. A timeline of events in the Center’s two-decade history anchors the narrative.
Considerable coverage is devoted to the year’s work done by the Center’s initiatives, through their competitive grants research and special projects in policy, ecology and marketing and food systems. Among the Center’s FY2007 significant involvement and investments: grassland agriculture; regional and local food systems; a multi-state collaboration, Green Lands, Blue Waters; micro-enterprise loans; Boone River Watershed research; food, energy and fuel use; and a survey of Iowa’s organic food producers.
The 56-page publication also includes reports from the some of the “strategic investments” funded by the Center beyond its extensive competitive grants program: Iowa’s Grape and Wine Industry Institute, Practical Farmers of Iowa on-farm demonstrations, promising students in the Graduate Program for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State, long-term organic crop research all over the state, and the Agricultural Systems Initiative in ISU’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Also in 2007, Director Jerry DeWitt proposed six new core issues for the Center’s advisory board and staff to evaluate, and took on leadership of the Iowa Learning Farms project. Distinguished Fellow Fred Kirschenmann continued his extensive speaking and writing career while maintaining connections with other sustainable agriculture groups (from Agriculture of the Middle to the Whiterock Conservancy) in Iowa and nationwide.
The annual report is edited by Mary Adams of the Leopold Center staff and designed by Julie Mangels of Juls Design in Ankeny.