Press Release

Kerr President Jim Horne Honored for Public Service

Jim Horne receives Public Service Award from NAREA president Lori Lynch. Click on photo to enlarge.

Kerr Center President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. James E. “Jim” Horne was honored for a lifetime of achievement by the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association (NAREA) during their annual meeting June 7-9 in Burlington, Vermont.

Horne received the association’s Outstanding Public Service through Economics Award, which “honors and recognizes economists who have applied agricultural, environmental, consumer, resource or community development economics in a unique way that has contributed toward solving an important problem and improving the welfare of society."

Dr. Doug Morris of the University of New Hampshire, who is NAREA secretary/treasurer, said that Dr. Horne was being recognized for guiding the Kerr Center’s work since 1985, successfully broadening and expanding the foundation’s focus and programs.

The non-profit center has gone from working mainly with cattle producers in southeastern Oklahoma to serving ag producers raising a variety of crops.

Horne and the center have worked with groups working on issues as diverse as farmland preservation, hunger, and the development of local markets for Oklahoma farm produce.

At the same time, the center remains grounded in the local community, with ongoing livestock and horticultural projects.

Under Horne’s leadership, the center has won awards for its soil and water conservation work, for environmental education, and most recently, for promoting children’s health, to name just a few.

Horne has served as chairman of the Southern Region Council for the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Program; as a member of the Scoping Task Force on Sustainable Agriculture for the President's Council on Sustainable Development; and as chairman of the U.S.D.A.'s National Sustainable Agriculture Advisory Council.

He gave initial testimony regarding the establishment of the now SARE program to congressional sub-committees.

Nominees for this award are “evaluated on the quality of their work and their demonstrated contribution to improving societal welfare.” The award is not given routinely, but only when a particularly deserving person is nominated, said Morris.

The NAREA is a professional association of agricultural and resource economists affiliated with the American Agricultural Economics Association. While many members live and work in the Northeast U.S. and Maritime Provinces of Canada, the Association membership now includes over 300 agricultural and resource economists from all over the world.

The Association publishes the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.

“In the course of doing your work everyday, you are often not aware of the people who are taking notice, said Horne, when learning of the honor. “Then you find out later you made a difference you didn’t know you had made.”

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