Jerry Hatfield Awarded Hugh Hammond Bennett Award

This content came from the Soil and Water Conservation Society 2016 Conference Brochure

The Hugh Hammond Bennett Award recognizes extraordinary national and international accomplishments in the conservation of soil, water, and related natural resources.

Jerry Hatfield is a plant physiologist and the laboratory director at the USDA Agricultural Research Service National Lab for Agriculture and the Environment. Hatfield’s career has been devoted to soil and water conservation issues, and he travels and speaks tirelessly to raise awareness of the links between climate, agricultural management, production, and soil and water quality. While he did not create a new institution, he has managed a large research laboratory for a quarter of a century and has provided signi cant leadership to the Agricultural Research Service, academic societies, organizations focused on conservation, as well as to multi-institutional and multinational research efforts.

He has been responsible for providing the technical manage- ment for multiagency, multilocation, and multidisciplinary programs such as the Management Systems Evaluation Areas (MSEA) and Agricultural Systems for Environmental Quality (AWEQ) across the Midwest. Hatfield has also led efforts in livestock and cropping systems research, as well as the impacts of climate change on agriculture. His character and demeanor are outstanding. He is honest, persistent, and has great integrity. Like Hugh Hammond Bennett, he has tirelessly spent his career raising awareness in conservation and supporting and defending soil and water conservation issues. To this end, Jerry Hatfield is well deserving of this year’s Hugh Hammond Bennett Award. View more here.