For more than 20 years, Gene Garrett has served as professor of forestry in the University of Missouri School of Natural Resources. He has nearly 200 papers, book chapters and articles to his credit in addition to teaching several university courses, including the distinguished capstone course for graduating seniors majoring in forestry.
Yet, it is for his service to Missouri and Missourians that the Conservation Federation of Missouri recently honored Gene Garrett. Many years ago, Gene saw the potential in black walnut as a valuable natural resource, especially for Missouri landowners and farmers. He embarked on an extensive research and teaching program that has led to national and international acceptance of the Missouri system of agroforestry. Over the years, Gene has shown time and time again that black walnuts in combination with row crops for farming systems can be a highly profitable and practical approach to agriculture while being good for soil and water conservation. His ideas have been widely accepted and are now recommended practices in federal conservation programs. In fact, Gene helped write the language for the federal farm bill's agroforestry provisions as well as legislation that led to on-farm agroforestry demonstration projects.
During his career, Gene has also served as president of the Association for Temperate Agroforestry and as president of the Walnut Council International. He has worked closely with the Missouri Chapter of the Walnut Council and the Missouri Nut Growers Association to establish cooperation with landowners actively participating in black walnut and agroforestry practices.
Through the University of Missouri, he has established one of the most renowned agroforestry research sites in New Franklin where work is being done on tree improvement of black walnut among other studies. And, his efforts to establish a Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri were realized on May 26 of this year when Chancellor Wallace signed the papers signaling the official status of the University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry.