Capacity crowd attends 72nd Haxtun Conservation District annual meeting

    Phillips County Event Center’s Biesemeier room was filled Monday night, Nov. 12, for the district’s 72nd annual meeting. Following entertainment by the Holyoke High School choir and a meal served by Kristie’s Katering, Roy Pfaltzgraff Jr. was awarded 2018 Conservationist of the Year for his farming techniques over the past 30 years.
    Pfaltzgraff has always loved trying new techniques. GPS, no-till farming, low-drift nozzles and computerized farm records have been used on his farm since they first became available. He can tell you what crops and the yield on any piece of land he’s farmed for over 20 years.
    Pfaltzgraff, born in Philadelphia to medical missionaries, lived in West Africa until he was 5. While attending McPherson College in Kansas, he worked summers for a harvest crew that came through Haxtun.
    After working two years on his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at Iowa State, he went to northeastern Nigeria to be a business manager and ag consultant. There he became fluent in the local trade language. After five years, he returned to Phillips County where he joined his father-in-law on the dryland wheat farm south of Haxtun.

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