Current Endowed Chairs
Katherine L. Clancy
Senior Fellow
Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems
College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences
411 Borlaug Hall
1991 Upper Buford Circle
St. Paul, MN 55108
Telephone: 612-625-5495
Toll free: 800-909-MISA (6472)
Fax: 612-625-1268
Email: kclancy@umn.eduKate Clancy until recently was a Senior Scientist in the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She was the Managing Director of the Wallace Center for Agricultural and Environmental Policy and has served on the faculties of Syracuse University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University. Dr. Clancy will be teaching a one credit graduate seminar on food systems Fall Semester. Additionally she will collaborate with Anne Kapuscinski, director of the Institute for Social, Economic and Ecosystem Services (ISEES) on developing a module for her course on sustainable fisheries that addresses the interaction of nutrition, food safety and public health concerns with the environmental effects of conventional and alternative production. Kate has expertise in nutrition and grazing systems that will be of interest to many of our partner organizations and is also working with the Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships on a new local food systems initiative.
Gigi DiGiacomo
Senior Fellow
Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems
College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences
411 Borlaug Hall
1991 Upper Buford Circle
St. Paul, MN 55108
Telephone: 612-710-1188
Fax: 952-591-7654
Email: rgdigiacomo@earthlink.net
Gigi Digiacomo is a consultant specializing in farm business management, marketing and planning. She is a co-author of "Building a Sustainable Business: A guide to developing a business plan for farms and rural businesses." Her Chair work involves the development of organic marketing tools, such as the "Upper Midwest Organic Grain and Feedstuffs Bi-Weekly Report," and the collection of organic farmer and retailer data to learn more about organic marketing practices and resource needs in Minnesota.
Gary Holthaus
Senior Fellow
Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems
College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource SciencesNPSAS
P.O. Box 194
LaMoure, ND 58458
Telephone: (701)-883-4304
Email: ghnpsas@drtel.net
Website: www.npsas.org
Gary Holthaus is leading discussion groups around the topic of new agrarianism. The conversations will be held in three communities to discuss pre-selected articles about sustainability. He, working with a local committee, identified essays with the future of agriculture, community, food and food security at the core. Holthaus is the director of the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society (NPSAS) and will divide his time between the Fargo-Moorhead area and southeast Minnesota. He is also the project director for a grant to the Rural America Writers Center from the Experiment in Rural Cooperation. That project resulted in a book, From the Farm to the Table: What All Americans Need to Know about Agriculture, published by the University of Kentucky Press. The time frame for his work is October 2006 through November 2007.
Larry Lev
Senior Fellow
Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems
College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences
Professor and Extension Marketing Specialist
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
221C Ballard Extension Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon 97331-3601
Telephone: 541-737-1417
Fax: 541-737-2563
Email: larry.lev@oregonstate.edu
Larry Lev is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Oregon State University. For MISA, he is working on three overlapping activities related to marketing alternatives: (1) Providing hands-on three day workshops for agricultural professionals (i.e., university faculty, staff, students, agency representatives, non-profit personnel) that focus on evaluating farmers markets and other alternative marketing channels; (2)Working with farmers' market managers to design a system that will help them assess the strengths and shortcomings of their markets and improve their ability to exchange information with other market managers; and (3) Exploring the potential for information exchange among locally-oriented farmers as they seek to both improve their existing marketing approaches and add new ones. While most of his time will be spent in Oregon, he will be in Minnesota about 6 weeks over the coming year.
MISA
411 Borlaug Hall
1991 Buford Circle
St. Paul, MN 55108
612-625-8235
800-909-6472
fax: 612-625-1268
