Irrigation Association reveals annual award winners

The Irrigation Association announced the recipients of its annual awards during Smart Irrigation Month in July.

The awards honor those who have made significant contributions to the irrigation industry. The 2022 IA awards program is sponsored by Hunter Industries.

These recipients will be honored during the 2022 Irrigation Show and Education Week in Las Vegas Dec. 5-9. 

Jack Buzzard is the recipient of the 2022 Industry Achievement Award. He retired from Rain Bird in 2006 after a 40-year career with the company. As vice president and director of the Rain Bird International Strategic Business Unit, Buzzard lived and worked in France, introducing Europe, and later parts of South America, to the concept of total, complete automatic irrigation systems.

Charlie Abee, CAIS, is a recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Education Award. He is an agriculture technology and irrigation professor at the College of the Sequoias in Tulare, California. Abee developed an irrigation training program at the College of the Sequoias from the ground up. Starting in 2017 with a basic water management course, he worked with local industry and California State University partners to create a program that meets the need for an entry-level technician, while also preparing and encouraging students to continue on to higher levels of education. Abee also serves on the IA Certification Board.

Bradley Jakubowski is a recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Education Award. He is an instructor of plant and turfgrass science at Penn State University. When he joined Penn State in 2017, he began to transform theory-based turf science and landscape irrigation courses by redeveloping them, nearly from scratch, to incorporate both instructional theory and hands-on troubleshooting and design. Jakubowski has developed entire courses around irrigation, water management and water conservation. During the pandemic, he transformed his garage into an irrigation instruction studio, complete with multiple camera angles and staged irrigation equipment. He has attended and presented at the IA landscape Faculty Academy events and currently serves on the Faculty Academy Planning Committee.

The SDI-E: Subsurface Drip Irrigation for Dairy Effluent Water Application project has been named the recipient of the 2022 Vanguard Award. This project is a subsurface drip irrigation system which uses patented blending control technology to mix dairy effluent with freshwater to create a natural fertilizer blend for farmers. The SDI-E makes it economically possible for dairies to manage their manure in ways that boost water quality, conserve water supplies, keep their farms in line with regulatory mandates and protect their bottom line. The companies involved with this project include Netafim USA, De Jager Farms, Sustainable Conservation, Western United Dairies and McRee Farms.