Governor Awards PFI for Environmental Excellence

With tremendous pride, on behalf of all PFI members, Dick and Sharon Thompson accepted an award for environmental excellence from the Honorable Governor Tom Vilsack on January 22, 2002 at the Iowa State Capital. This is the second year for the Governor’s Iowa Environmental Excellence Award. It is designed to “recognize business, organizations, and citizens who have excelled in environmental sustainability, demonstrating leadership, innovation, and a comprehensive environmental ethic in managing natural resources.”

The program notes salute PFI as a “... leader in both sustainable agriculture and innovative marketing. PFI has partnered with Iowa State University to take the concept of sustainable agriculture out of the school’s research department and onto the farm. [PFI] has used the latest farm technology to reduce fertilizer and pesticide inputs, and has employed no-till and ridge-till methods to improve water quality through reduced top soil runoff. PFI has also improved air quality through reduced energy consumption, and has developed the Food Systems Program, an alternative marketing project aimed at increasing farmers’ profits. More than 19,000 visitors have attended 400 PFI-sponsored farm field days.”

That’s what the program notes say. We see the award as a tribute to the enormous courage and leadership on the part of PFI’s founders to tackle three things at once back in the mid-eighties. That is, (a) to promote a completely new approach to farming; (b) to promote a fresh approach that empowered the farmer in on-farm research; and (c) to start a farmer driven organization at a time when most people wanted to get out of farming.

More than fifteen years later, the term sustainable agriculture still means different things to different people, and therein lies a portion of our [PFI’s] strength. Rather than being a specific endpoint, sustainable agriculture, as understood by PFI, is a process, direction, and outlook that must be actualized differently in each particular context. PFI members have consistently demonstrated approaches to agriculture that are profitable, ecologically sound, and good for families and communities.

Winner of the Iowa Wildlife Federation 1997 Soil Conservationist Award and Renew America’s Environmental Achievement Award in 1991 and again in 2000, Practical Farmers of Iowa demonstrates what Iowans can accomplish working together to preserve the land and the livelihoods derived from agriculture. Congratulations to all!