November 3, 2008
AMES, Iowa - Three members of the Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences faculty have been appointed to a national air quality task force.
Hongwei Xin, agricultural and biosystems engineering professor, Robert Burns, agricultural and biosystems engineering associate professor, and Jerry Hatfield, director of the National Soil Tilth Laboratory and a collaborating professor of agronomy, will serve on the Agricultural Air Quality Task Force. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer recently appointed 25 people to the new task force.
Task force members will review research that addresses air quality issues related to agriculture or the agriculture infrastructure and provide recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture on the development and implementation of air quality policy and research needs.
Other responsibilities with which the task force is charged include working to ensure intergovernmental coordination in establishing policy for agricultural air quality, assisting federal agencies in correcting erroneous data with respect to agricultural air quality, and ensuring air quality research related to agriculture receives adequate peer review and considers economic feasibility.
The appointments are for a two-year term. An orientation meeting for the task force will be held Nov. 6-7 in Washington, D.C.