ICGA Names Environmental Award After Longtime Supporter

For the first time, ICGA awarded the Mike Plumer Environmental Excellence Award at their annual meeting on November 23 in Bloomington, IL. Margaret Henry, Director of Sustainable Agriculture for PepsiCo was the inaugural winner of the newly named award.

Mike Plumer served as an ex officio member of the IL Corn Growers Association Board from 1991 to 2010. Even after his retirement, he continued to work with the ICGA helping farmers understand and implement conservation practices until his death in 2017.

Mike served as a University of Illinois Extension Agent for 34 years, in Kankakee County and Williamson County. He was a pioneer in the no-till farming movement and cover crop management of farm acres. He was committed to preservation of the soil, but approached his work with farmers in a quiet, gentle way that understood their family business and way of life.

Throughout his life, Mike served on many local, regional, and national boards and committees related to agriculture, protecting our natural resources, and feeding the world. During all of this he farmed his own land, researching and testing ideas on his own crops.

Mark Lambert, a former Communications Director of IL Corn said of Mike, “My friend Mike Plumer left his imprint on an entire industry. He was a conservation educator and pioneer who believed in farming smarter and saving and building our soil resources to feed and clothe future generations. He shared his dearth of knowledge with farmers, scientists, decision makers and he was highly successful in his outreach with environmental messages to the urban public. But in the end, I will remember him as my thoughtful, soft spoken, sincere friend who had an enduring love for his wife, an affinity for nature, Triumph motorcycles, and his fellow farmers in the US and overseas.”

The farmer leaders of ICGA are proud to name their previous environmental award after Mike, preserving his example of thoughtful leadership and conservation excellence.