John Heard probably wouldn’t claim he was one of the world’s top crop advisers, but if he did, he’d have the certificate to prove it.
Heard, a soil fertility specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development in Carman, will receive the International Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) of the year award from the American Society of Agronomy at its annual meeting Nov. 5 in Long Beach, California.
“Energetic, enthusiastic, smart, knowledgeable, reliable, practical, innovative, effective, efficient — he’s (Heard) got all those characteristics, but he does have one flaw and that is he’s modest,” said fellow soil scientist Don Flaten of the University of Manitoba.
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The award “presented for outstanding contributions to agronomy through education, national and international service, and research,” couldn’t have gone to a more deserving recipient, said Cindy Grant, a soil and fertility research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Brandon.
“It’s wonderful recognition for a superlative extension person,” Grant said. “He’s technically great but also creative in how he approaches things and he’s energetic and enthusiastic.”
The award comes with a $2,000 honorarium, which Heard has donated to one of Flaten’s graduate students so he can attend the meeting and present his research.
It’s typical of Heard’s generosity, Flaten said. But Heard downplayed it saying as a civil servant he couldn’t accept the money.
Heard is taking holidays to attend the meeting, something he has done before. And often while travelling to scientific meetings, Heard pursues one of his hobbies — collecting official provincial and state soils, underscoring the passion for what he does.
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Heard is so effective in extending agronomic information to farmers and agronomists because of his creativity, Flaten said. For example, Heard used maple syrup (tapped from his own trees) and water to demonstrate how some unscrupulous sales people can manipulate data. He added his miracle product to test plots and proved, by the data he selected, it boosted crop yields.
“He just has the courage and the initiative to come up with the most creative and effective ideas for getting messages like this across, like you can’t always trust what other people tell you about products,” Flaten said.
Heard credits genetics for his extension acumen; his father was a highly respected farm management specialist in Ontario.
“I tend to use a lot of gadgets and props to make talks more interesting,” as his father did, Heard said.
Heard said he also gets ideas and inspiration from attending conferences.
“I travel and I steal and share good ideas,” he said.
Heard is a civil servant in the old-fashioned sense of the term. He often answers his phone saying, “John Heard at your service.”
“Manitoba farmers are very well served by John,” Flaten said.
He plays an important role not only disseminating research results to farmers and agronomists, but by assisting researchers to connect with farmers to conduct trials, he added.
“And he’s a great resource to bring into classes and laboratory sessions and interact with our students and introduce them to some of the questions and some of the issues that they’ll end up dealing with when they graduate,” Flaten said.
Heard is a great communicator, Grant said.
“I use him as a very important resource in my own work,” she said.
“He can take complex ideas and simplify them without losing their meaning and without losing the nuances. He can carry the detailed science to a farm audience very, very well. “You have to be able to understand stuff to be able to do that well.”
Heard’s list of accomplishments is long, including years of co-ordinating the Crop Diagnostic School MAFRD and the University of Manitoba to run training for more than 400 private and public agronomists and farmers annually, chairing the annual Manitoba Agronomists’ Conference at the University of Manitoba, attended in person by around 190 agronomists and the same number online.
He chairs numerous committees and held many positions with the Prairie Certified Crop Advisors organization.
Heard is also outgoing in his community, serving as a Boy Scout leader for 20 years and treasurer of his church.
