South Dakota Soybean seeks nominees for Leopold prize

South Dakota Soybean is looking for applicants for the Leopold Conservation Award.

“It was a good reflective experience to go through that application process,” said Jamie Johnson, who with her husband Brian, was the South Dakota Leopold Conservation Award winner in 2019.

“Winning it was very humbling, but we met a lot of great people from across the United States that were also Leopold Conservation winners. Just learning from each other about what works in your region and geography and topography, and all those things was a really valuable experience,” said Johnson, a former South Dakota Soybean Association board member who farms at Frankfurt, South Dakota.

Applications for this year’s Leopold Conservation Award are due March 7^th. The Leopold Award, named for conservationist Aldo Leopold, is presented by the Sand County Foundation to landowners in 28 states. Judging for the Leopold Conservation Award is done by an independent panel of agricultural professionals. The criteria, according to the Sand County Foundation website, include conservation ethic, resilience, leadership and communication, innovation and adaptability, and ecological community, meaning landowners with farms, ranches and forests that work with soil, water, plants and wildlife, etc., to benefit others.

The award presented to the Johnsons in 2019 was because of their achievement in farming practices like cover cropping and managed livestock grazing, according to Jamie Johnson.

“It’s an award that really focuses on conservation and stewardship of all the natural resources on your operation whether that’s soil and water and plant life and trees and things like that,” she said. “On our operation, we really try to look at it as a whole system and how every crop and everything affects the next thing. And that’s kind of the emphasis of the Leopold Award is coming together and looking at everything as one system.”

The 2019 award was by no means a destination for Brian and Jamie Johnson; they continue to add practices that conserve their land’s resources.

“Since then we’ve started using rye as a cover crop across our farm behind all of our corn acres so that we’re planting green all of our soybeans every spring, so that’s new since the Leopold Award and we learned that from some other people and I experimented in my garden with it before Brian tried it in the field,” said Jamie Johnson. “We’re always trying to tweak something and improve something just like everybody else on their operation.”