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Steering Committee Meeting

SERA-IEG 20

July 6, 1999
UGA-CAES-NESPAL Building, Tifton, GA

Welcome

Dr. Phil Utley, Assistant Dean, CAES Campus at Tifton

Dr. Al Smith, Head, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Athens

Dr. Bill Harris, Texas A&M, had to leave for an emergency at home before the steering committee meeting. Dr. Greg Weidemann, Univ. of Arkansas, and Dr. Ray Knighton, interim CSREES representative, could not attend.

Renewal of SERA-IEG 20 was completed and approved during this past year. The SERA-IEG is the CSREES and Southern Directors approved regional activity that permits this the Regional conservation Tillage Conference and proceedings. Although the termination date was not clear, it should be September, 2003. Dr. Ike Sewell, former research co-advisor and Dr. Jim Hook prepared the request for renewal of this activity.

IEG Web Page has not been established as a permanent site with past years proceedings made available electronically. Currently last year's host University of Arkansas and this year's host University of Georgia are maintaining sites with conference outcomes and downloadable copies of the proceedings. The difficulty with this strategy is that there is no means to assure that they will continue to support those sites. It would be desirable to have a central site established.

The current year's proceedings publication format was discussed. In that edition authors were given three options - peer-reviewed manuscripts, non-reviewed papers, and short reports (interpretative summaries, extended abstracts, or research summaries). Members felt that all submitters should be required to prepare full papers. Those papers could be peer reviewed or not. They may be progress report type papers. For either an interpretative summary was encourage to make the information accessible to farmers and other users. To simplify handling of manuscripts, selection of none word processor and image program were encouraged. An on-line publication was created as down-loadable pdf formatted chapters from the document. Members expressed a desire to continue hard copies for attendees with limited additional extra copies available for libraries.

Site Selection - the planned conference sites for coming years was confirmed and a new site recommended and approved for 2002. The Sites are as follows:

Monroe, Louisiana; 2000, Pat Bollich, host contact

Stillwater, Oklahoma; 2001, Jim Stiegler, host contact

Auburn, Alabama, 2002, Wayne Reeves, host contact

Awards - Dr. Terry Keisling reported that the awards committee had received limited nominations for the annual Southern Conservation Tillage Award. The Award will be given at the luncheon banquet.