Alumni Award

Sustainability and profitability are not mutually exclusive. Long before being green was fashionable, Derrick N. Exner ’69 was helping farmers discover environmentally friendly and fiscally sound farming methods.

After graduating from Grinnell, Exner joined the food co-op movement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he helped organize food co-op blocks in blue-collar neighborhoods. He also volunteered on a New Hampshire farm that was precursor to community-supported agriculture.

In 1978, Exner enrolled at Iowa State University. He earned an M.S. in soil management and later earned a Ph.D. in soil fertility. In 1985, he helped found the Practical Farmers of Iowa, an organization that helps farmers do profitable and environmentally friendly farming.

Because most academic research on organic and alternative farming was limited to small garden plots, the results were often meaningless to farmers. To solve this problem, Exner pushed to include farmers as co-researchers. He recruited collaborators, obtained funding, and designed experiments that studied sustainable farming techniques. His carefully-reported studies gave many farmers valuable information as they worked on their own crops.

The research protocol developed by Exner has served as “common language” between farmers and academics, and has helped fuel a range of collaborations. It has been used by Iowa farmers in more than 700 on-farm trials.

For his unwavering dedication to turning great ideas into practical solutions, Grinnell is pleased to recognize Derrick N. Exner ’69.