AU Faculty Earn Conservation Tillage Award

Joe Touchton, head of the Auburn University College of Agriculture's Department of Agronomy and Soils, and Wayne Reeves, affiliate professor in the department, have been presented the 2004 Southern Conservation Tillage Conference Service Award.

The two received the award this month at the 26th meeting of the Southern Conservation Tillage Conference for Sustainable Agriculture (SCTCSA) in Raleigh , N.C. , in recognition of their outstanding efforts to promote conservation tillage systems among farmers in the southeastern U.S.

As a researcher, teacher and administrator, Touchton has contributed significantly through the years to the move toward conservation tillage. He joined the AU agronomy and soils faculty in 1980, two years after having organized the first SCTCSA in Georgia . He has served as department head since 1989.

Reeves, who was a graduate student under Touchton, was research agronomist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Soil Dynamics Lab in Auburn until last year, when he was named research leader at USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Center in Watkinsville, Ga. He remains an affiliate faculty member at Auburn.

Conservation tillage, a planting system in which crops are grown with minimum cultivation of the soil, significantly reduces soil erosion and improves soil quality. At the annual SCTCSA, USDA researchers and conservationists, university scientists, extension specialists, crop consultants, farmers and others meet to share current information on conservation tillage as applied to the region's unique conditions of weather, soil, crops and economics.

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu

06/26/04

For immediate release