From the CEO Working to Secure
Irrigation’s Future By Deborah M. Hamlin, CAE, FASAE
Spring has sprung and great things are happening at the Irrigation Association. Though the acquisition of Irrigation & Green Industry magazine is our biggest news, there is still a lot more going on. As Greg Hunter mentioned in his January message, developing our future workforce and promoting the value of irrigation are two important new elements in IA’s strategic plan approved by the IA Board of Directors in December.
As we go to press, I am pleased to report that the Irrigation Foundation has just selected 16 students to be the first recipients of the Foundation’s new educational scholarships. We hope this program will help students studying agriculture and horticulture to pursue careers in irrigation. Like Faculty Academy and the E3 grant program, this new scholarship program is focused on recruiting our industry’s future workers — and possibly your future employees.
The IA is thinking outside the box and taking a new and different approach to promote the value of irrigation — in elementary schools. We have partnered with Young Minds Inspired to introduce irrigation concepts to third-, fourth- and fifth-graders through a student-teacher activity pack. In April, 10,000 teachers in California, Texas, Florida and Nebraska will receive How Does Your Garden Grow, a lesson plan to teach the benefits of agriculture and landscape irrigation and the basic water cycle. This curriculum project is just one of the many initiatives we plan to launch as part of our new public affairs efforts.
My goal over time is to lessen the frequency in which I hear: 1) It’s hard to find good people, and 2) People don’t appreciate the value of irrigation — whether it be agriculture or landscape. The above programs are just the tip of the iceberg of what we can and will be doing moving forward. Stay tuned for more!
IGIN’s Denne Goldstein and Deborah Hamlin sign the paperwork to make the magazine acquisition official.
6 Irrigation TODAY | April 2017
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