Dan Egan

media release: The Morrill Lecture Series kicks off with Dan Egan in conversation with Dick Cates!

Dan’s newest book, THE DEVIL’S ELEMENT: PHOSPHORUS AND A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE, is an insightful exploration of one of earth’s most significant and dangerous natural resources. Since it was first refined from human urine in a seventeenth-century alchemist’s laboratory, phosphorus has been used to help burn down entire cities as well as to create the modern chemical fertilizers that have allowed the global population to nearly quadruple in the past hundred years. With a journalist’s ability to translate meticulous research into a thrilling story, Egan brings phosphorus’s checkered history to life. Today, with phosphorus at the center of an increasingly dire environmental disaster poisoning freshwater sources all over the globe, its history has taken on renewed significance. Egan convincingly makes the case that we can no longer afford to be ignorant of our phosphorous use and the damage it is causing.

Dick Cates, local farmer, conservationist, and much more (see bio below!) will talk with Dan about his work and what we as communities and individuals can do to help with this serious issue.

Dan Egan for many years covered the Great Lakes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Now he writes occasional long-form pieces about climate change for national media outlets, including the New York Times, and is a senior water policy fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Freshwater Sciences. He is the author of THE DEVIL'S ELEMENT: PHOSPHORUS AND A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE and the New York Times best seller THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES. Twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, he has won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, John B. Oakes Award, AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, and J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School, he lives in Milwaukee with his wife and children.

Dick Cates and his wife Kim, with son Eric and wife Kiley, and daughter Shannon and husband Dan, co-own the Cates Family Farm LLC, a grass-fed beef and contract grazing business. Eric and Kiley began to take over management and ownership in 2016. Dick is a life-long farmer who grew up working on his family’s cow-calf operation, Iowa County dairy farms, Montana ranches, and in large-scale dairy forage and grain crop production overseas.

Dick pursued professional studies in soil science and agronomy to understand and conduct research on the scientific principles of agricultural systems; he earned an M.S. (1979) In Soils, Montana State University and Ph.D. (1983) in Soils/Plant Health, UW-Madison College of Agricultural & Life Sciences, while serving a Leopold Fellowship (1983). Continuing involvement with his family’s farm through those years, Dick began taking over management in 1987 and then, along with Kim, purchased a portion of the land to build and operate their own farming business.

In 1995 Dick was given the opportunity to develop and direct the WI School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers (WSBDF), a program at the UW-Madison to train new would-be farmers in business planning and managed grazing. The WSBDF has assisted over 600 young (and not-so-young) individuals to start, or move towards, their dream to farm. Dick retired from this work in 2018, but over the 23 years he also developed and taught courses in grassland ecology, pasture management, managed grazing, and agroecology.

Dick and his family are members of the Iowa County Uplands Farmer-led Watershed Project and the Lowery Creek Watershed Initiative where they share information about and demonstrate conservation practices with other landowners and the public near and far; they sponsor annual conservation days for Iowa County middle school youth and the River Valley high school students. Dick has served internationally as a volunteer on a dozen farmer-to-farmer assistance projects in developing countries in Africa, Central America, and Asia.

The Cates family has been recognized for their soil and water conservation work: 1998 Wisconsin Soil and Water Conservation Achievement Award, Soil and Water Conservation Society of America; 1999 and 2018 Water Quality Leadership Award, Iowa County Land Conservation; 2000 Distinguished Agricultural Award, Kiwanis Club of Downtown Madison; 2006 certification by the national Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), the first beef farm in the USA to receive this certification; 2009 WI Grazing Community Communicator of the Year; 2012 UW-Madison Farm & Industry Short Course Alumni Service to Agriculture; 2013 Sand County Foundation and WI Farm Bureau Federation (WFBF) Leopold Conservation Award; 2016 Blue Mounds Area Project Bur Oak Award; 2016 Wisconsin Master Agriculturist; and 2020 WFBF Distinguished Service to WI Agriculture Award.

Dick presently serves as chairman (elected) for the Town of Wyoming and supervisor for the Spring Green Fire District, and on the boards of the Driftless Area Land Conservancy, Upland Hills Health Foundation, and the Sand County Foundation (the founder and lead sponsor of the annual Leopold Conservation Awards, now in 26 states). Recently he served on the WI DATCP Board of Agriculture, the USDA Secretary’s Advisory Council for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers, the SW WI Community Action Program Board, and the River Valley School District Board of Education (recent past President). He is a member of the WI and Iowa County Cattlemen’s Association, WI and Iowa County Farm Bureau Federation, WI Farmers Union, Grass Works, and Spring Green Lions.

Dick authored the book Voices from the Heart of the Land: Rural Stories that Inspire Community (2008; University of Wisconsin Press), which is based on conversations with elder rural citizens around their values about character, and care for our land and rural community; and a children’s book, An Adventure on Sterna’s Hill (2019), a story that takes place on the Cates Family Farm.

Dick and Kim enjoy walking on the farm and in wild country anywhere, and skiing and dancing together; they have four grandchildren who are the joy of their lives.