Leopold Letter: News & Notes, Spring 2009

Nominations for the Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture are due June 1. The award will be presented later this year to an Iowan who has helped family farms prosper and contributed to energizing Iowa’s rural communities and economy.

Individuals may apply for the award or be nominated by others. Agricultural organizations are strongly encouraged to submit nominations to highlight the achievements of their members. Contact Mary Adams by fax, (515) 294-9696, or e-mail madams@iastate.edu. Check out the information on the Spencer Award page for more details.

The Iowa Chapter of Gamma Sigma Delta, the Honor Society of Agriculture, presented its Distinguished Achievement in Agriculture Award to Leopold Center Director Jerry DeWitt at its annual banquet April 9. The award recognizes exemplary contributions to agriculture in the form of teaching, research, extension, international or other distinguished service.

Leopold Center Associate Director Rich Pirog is the lead author of a chapter about food distribution for the new book, Sustainability in the Food Industry, published in March 2009 by IFT Press of Indianapolis. The book combines technical research summaries, case studies and marketing information and is edited by Cheryl Baldwin, Vice President of Science and Standards for Green Seal, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit certification organization.

The Leopold Center is providing funds to cover 10 percent of the 2009 budget for an energy specialist to be employed in the Midwest office of the National Center for Appropriate Technology. Rich Dana will be working with small and midsize Iowa farmers who use sustainable production practices and could be eligible for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency grant programs offered through USDA Rural Development. Dana is an energy consultant, who most recently worked with the Grinnell Area Petroleum Replacement Initiative. To contact Dana and for more information on the program, go to: http://www.attra.ncat.org

Recommendations from the December 2008 Leopold Center workshop, “Learning from the Floods of 2008: Practical Strategies for Resilience,” have been compiled into a new Leopold Center publication. To request a copy, contact the Leopold Center at (515) 294-3711, or view it on the Center Web site.

Iowa State University graduate student Nick McCann, who also works with the Leopold Center and the Value Chain Partnerships project, received a top award at the Third Annual Big 12 MBA Case Competition at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Teams of four MBA students were given a case written for the competition and given less than 24 hours to analyze the situation, research the possibilities, propose ideas and prepare a presentation. McCann is a first-year MBA student with a minor in sustainable agriculture.

Natalie Askren, a junior from Muscatine who is studying magazine journalism and art and design at Iowa State University, worked during the Spring 2009 semester as a Leopold Center communications assistant. Her primary responsibilities have been to prepare materials for the Center’s Web site. The summer communications intern is Allison Severson, a senior in advertising and political science from Belmond, Iowa.