The National Swine Improvement Federation (NSIF) presented the Charles Stanislaw Memorial Distinguished Service Award to Mark Boggess, director of the USDA Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb., on Dec. 1 at the NSIF Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Mo.
“We’re doing amazing things and we’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” Boggess said during his remarks at the conference. “It’s just an incredible time to look at the science and the opportunity in our industry. There’s never been a time like it. So, in spite of all the things that we’re dealing with today, it’s an amazing time for science.”
Boggess grew up on a farm in Iowa where his family raised sheep, cattle and pigs. He earned his master’s degree from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in animal breeding and genetics in 1990 from Iowa State University under the guidance of Max Rothschild.
“Boggess has had a tremendous impact on the U.S. livestock industries through his various roles at the National Pork Board and the USDA ARS system,” says Ken Stalder, his award nominator and a professor at Iowa State University.
He went on to serve as a beef cattle and swine specialist for the University of Idaho before becoming the executive director of Salmon Creek Farms. While he was at Salmon Creek Farms, he built and managed a 500-sow farrow-to-finish operation and a boar stud focusing on producing a branded product under the Salmon Creek Farms label.
“Boggess is an innovator,” Stalder says. “That was evident early in his career when he established Salmon Creek Farms’ marketing system to provide markets for the livestock he and other producers raised throughout Idaho at a time when niche markets were in their infancy.”
He later took on the role of director of the animal science committee at the National Pork Board and then moved into several roles at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.
“Dr. Boggess has a real skill at bringing people together from diverse backgrounds and getting them to function as very effective teams. This occurred in his roles as an Extension educator early in his career and again at the National Pork Board, and most recently as the director of the USDA Meat Animal Research Center,” Stalder says.
Mark and his wife, Gladys, live in Hastings, Neb., and have a daughter, Isabelle, who is in the fourth grade.
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NSIF Lightning Talks: Top Swine Genetics Students Take the Stage
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