St. Louis, MO ⎯ The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA) recognized several people at its annual meeting held September 6 in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Ruth White Media Award is presented to an individual who’s demonstrated an evidence of consistent, objective, and accurate reporting on American agriculture and the myriad of issues involved in modern agriculture, including the CropLife industry. This year’s winner is Mike Adams, formerly with American Ag Network.
Mike Adams has been a longstanding and trusted voice of American Agriculture for 44 years. Along with sharing market information, throughout the year, Adams on Agriculture reports directly on location from several major national agricultural meetings and events. His professionalism, experience and passion for agriculture are unsurpassed in the ag media landscape.
Mike grew up working on a grain and livestock farm in Illinois. After graduating from Lewis & Clark college he began his radio career at WLDS in Jacksonville, Illinois. Then after 27 years at the station, Mike became host of the syndicated radio program AgriTalk and held that position for 16 years before starting a new syndicated program called Adams on Agriculture which he hosted until his retirement in 2021.
Adams is a past President of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting, and a recipient of several other awards.
The MACA Educator of the Year Award was also presented to Dr. Todd Gaines, Colorado State University. The award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated significant contributions to American agriculture, especially in the MACA region. Also, the person has demonstrated evidence of consistency in educating the public on the value of production agriculture.
Dr. Todd Gaines is from the Agricultural Biology department at Colorado State University where he has emerged as a top global educator in agriculture with a program focus on crop weeds and the underlying molecular and biochemical mechanisms of herbicide resistance to common herbicides such as Roundup, Atrazine, Glean, and many others.
His state, national, and global recognition is based on his expert knowledge of molecular target site resistance and non-target site resistance (where, as a PhD student he made the first ever global discovery of EPSPS gene amplification as the basis of glyphosate resistance in Palmer amaranth which was published in PNAS).
He has been instrumental in a weed science educational short course targeted to weed management personnel working for major agrichemical companies.
