Rod Nilsestuen Legacy Event addresses sustainable land use

UW-River Falls will host the Rod Nilsestuen Legacy Event on Friday, April 5, featuring a keynote address by Jonathon Scholl, president of American Farmland Trust, on the best uses for rural land and water resources in the 21st Century. The address will begin at 1 p.m. in the Kinnickinnic Theater in the University Center. The presentation is free and open to the public.

As the world’s population continues to grow at a startling rate, the question of how we will feed the world is significant. The availability of natural resources to meet the needs of the heightened level of agricultural production is a challenge, and competing claims for those resources are contested. Therefore, the allocation of natural resources is a topic of increasing importance, according to the press release issued on the event.

Nilsestuen, who earned his undergraduate degree at UWRF, was the Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection at the time of his death in July 2010. He is remembered as a proud steward of sustainable agriculture and a leader in the national cooperative movement who strove to balance the needs of sustainable land use with the maximization of agricultural production. The inaugural Rod Nilsestuen Legacy Event, “Feeding the World, Sustaining the Land, Inspiring Cooperative Action,” was held in March 2012.

The Rod Nilsestuen Fund was established by friends, family, and colleagues, and several land conservation and cooperative organizations, and is part of the Ralph K. Morris Foundation, an organization that shares Nilsestuen’s dedication to cooperatives and leadership development.

For more information, contact Jim White, assistant professor of Agricultural Economics, at james.white@uwrf.edu.