Articles

Jeff Martin receives Distinguished Service Award

By Andy Holstine, Past President

Jeff Martin has been associated with the Chicago Farmers for nearly twenty years.  During this time he has been very active, serving as a director, president and in nearly every other voluntary role.  He hosted the summer picnic on his family farm in Mt. Pulaski and spent fifteen years as co-chair of the Farmland Forum.  In short, his efforts to make our organization better have been enormous. 

But Jeff’s energy and contributions extend well beyond the Chicago Farmers and his industry leadership and service made the recognition of the “Distinguished Service to Agriculture” award well-deserved.  The Chicago Farmers first created this award in 1977 and you can find the list of past winners here.  You will find that past recipients of the award include the founder of McDonald’s, captains of agribusiness, leaders in academia and research, prominent media , and a Secretary of Agriculture.  While Mr. Martin may describe himself as “only” a farmer, the impact of his life’s work has contributed greatly to the evolution of farming practices employed across millions of acres each year.

Jeff started farming with his father in 1976.  As he recounted when accepting the award, early in his career he watched a dust storm destroy their fields.  For Jeff, who had grown up listening to his grandfather extoll a belief that the land they lived on could provide for their family forever, this experience galvanized a belief in the importance in taking a long view valuing conservation as central to good stewardship of the land.  This mindset led him to continually examine existing farming conventions and practices, explore new technology and share techniques that improved the land and added worth. 

Jeff was a very early adopter of no-till farming, initially building his own equipment and culminating in an award as the no-till innovator of the year and recognition in 2016 as one of 25 “no-till legends.”  After seeing the benefits of setting aside CRP acres on his farm, he started a business that has since planted more than 1,000 acres of trees and prairie grass.  He was at the vanguard of the use of cover crops and research he conducted on his fields was published in an industry magazine.  Jeff was appointed member of the Federal Reserve Agriculture Advisory Board for several years.  He has also been recognized as the Illinois wildlife landowner of the year, received the corn growers’ environmental action award, named the AgriNews farmer of the year, and his family has been featured in numerous publications over years.  Jeff has farmed with his grandfather, father, brother and now has both sons farming with him full time, maybe the greatest measure of success and a life well-lived. 

I view Jeff as a remarkable example of doing well by doing good.  When accepting the award, he remarked that the Chicago Farmers was one of the best groups he had ever been a part of.  Speaking for the Chicago Farmers, I would like to express how fortunate we are that Jeff chose to contribute so much over the years and congratulate him again on an award truly earned.