The Leopold Center has been crippled, but it ain’t dead yet — even though the Legislature eliminated its funding this spring.
The main funding mechanism for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture was set up to literally make the center work itself out of business. Approximately three-quarters of its funding came from a very modest tax on fertilizer and pesticides (35 percent of a 75 cent per-ton tax; nitrogen fertilizer costs around $500 per ton).
The success of the Leopold Center in encouraging sustainable or ecological agriculture could thus be measured by its shrinking funds from this source due to farmers’ declining need for fertilizer and pesticides.
Funding from the tax has eroded — due to inflation, not because Iowa farmers are using fewer chemicals. The state appropriation that provided most of the rest of its $2 million in annual funding also declined slowly.
The center’s funding did not decrease fast enough for certain groups, including Rep. Cecil Dolecheck, who spearheaded the defunding and attempted closure of the Leopold Center in this year’s Republican dominated Legislature.
Dolecheck argued the Leopold Center should be closed because it had accomplished its mission. Hardly! Iowa continues to face issues of human-induced global warming, impaired waterways, continued soil erosion, declining soil fertility, over-use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, polluting livestock confinements, and faltering rural communities.
Still, the body of work of the LCSA is impressive.The ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) listed major accomplishments of the LCSA:
“The Center has earned a national reputation for exploring innovative, profitable approaches to farming that conserve natural resources and stimulate local economies.
“Selected examples include streamside buffer strips (a nationally recognized water quality model); alternative pork and beef production systems; many water quality practices highlighted in the statewide Iowa Nutrient Reduction strategy (including cover crops and bioreactors) can be traced back to support from the center; and development and support of local foods production and marketing systems that reward entrepreneurship; and boost rural economic development.
“Also, the Leopold Center is a partner on Iowa State’s research team for a nationally recognized water quality improvement project called the Science-based Trials of Row-crops Integrated with Prairie Strips, or STRIPS. In the past year, the project has received national media and policy attention, including a highlight in a report to congress on university research successes.”
The Leopold Center celebrated its 30th anniversary this past academic year. I have seen its impact for more than 20 of those 30 years — as a faculty member, as a grantee of the Leopold Center, and as a member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture (GPSA).
I would add the following accomplishments:
Professor Matt Liebman’s 10-year study with funding from the Leopold Center demonstrated how, by including small grains and/or alfalfa in the rotation, farmers can reduce the need for chemical inputs without hurting the yield or profit obtained with a standard corn-soybean rotation. Moreover, these more complex rotations gradually build soil quality.
The LCSA organized the Regional Foods System Working Group which spawned county and multi-county food groups that covered nearly the entire state of Iowa with a paid food coordinator for each group. That program was later spun off to ISU Extension and was Michigan and other states patterned their state and regional food groups on that of the LCSA. The LCSA became known nationally for popularizing the term food miles and showed that the most efficient transport of food is accomplished within a regional food system.
The LCSA has played a major role in nurturing the GPSA over nearly two decades. The program would not have succeeded without the LCSA. Some 32 students and 70 faculty are affiliated with the GPSA.
The Leopold Center’s mandate for dealing with issues in agriculture and rural areas is much broader than the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, to which the Legislature assigned the fertilizer and pesticide tax funds of the LCSA. We have been impressed in our international travels with the concern expressed regarding the possible demise of the Leopold Center.
But perhaps the greatest cost if the Leopold Center were to wither and die is that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (and, by extension, Iowa State University itself), would lose its soul. It would have surrendered its interest in the common good.
Those associated with the Leopold Center, whether staff (of which there are now only two), farmers, ISU faculty, grantees, graduate students and the public interested in the common good, are a tenacious lot.
We will not give up the Leopold Center without a fight. That is why CALS and Director Mark Rasmussen are scheduling listening sessions across the state to give the Leopold Center future direction.
The first will be from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday at the Hansen Ag Student Learning Center, 2508 Mortensen Road, in Ames. Public comments also can be submitted online at www.leopold.iastate.edu/leopold
Jan L. Flora, professor emeritus, ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornelia Butler Flora, Charles F. Curtiss distinguished professor emerita of Agriculture and Life Sciences