Greg Lardy, head of North Dakota State University's Animal Sciences Department, is the 2010 recipient of the American Society of Animal Science Extension Award.
The award recognizes recipients for outstanding and noteworthy contributions to Extension animal science programming. Lardy received the award at the society's annual meeting in Denver.
Before being named head of the Animal Sciences Department in 2009, Lardy was the NDSU Extension Service's beef cattle specialist for 12 years. He also was promoted to professor in 2009.
"This award means a great deal to me and reflects the opportunities I have been given to work with a great set of colleagues in the NDSU Extension Service," Lardy says. "Without their help in carrying out these programs, I would not have received this award.
"This award reflects my passion for the beef industry and the producers I had the opportunity to work with on a daily basis," he adds.
His Extension work included efforts related to beef cattle nutrition and management with emphasis on the use of coproducts and alternative feeds in beef cattle diets, as well as drought management. In addition, he led multistate projects focused on expanding educational programming on backgrounding beef cattle in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming and developed educational programs such as Beef 101, Cow-Calf Schools and the Feedlot MBA.
He also was instrumental in the development of NDSU's Beef Systems Center of Excellence; provided leadership for several regional committees with a focus on Extension programming; offered regular in-service training for county Extension agents on beef cattle production-related issues; and works closely with the North Dakota Stockmen's Association, regularly speaking at its annual convention on topics ranging from beef quality assurance to feeding ethanol coproducts to cattle.
In addition, Lardy has been the principal investigator on research projects that generated more than $1.4 million in grant funding and co-principal investigator on projects with grants totaling more than $5 million. He is the author of 55 peer-reviewed publications and an additional 200 research publications, has advised 15 master of science and four Ph.D. students, served on two U.S. Department of Agriculture grant review panels and is a member of the American Society of Animal Science's board of directors as the organization's Midwest section representative.
