CALS HONORS GIACOMINI AS INDUSTRY LEADER
On October 23 the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences presented the Honorary Recognition Award to Peter Giacomini, Chief Operating Officer of AgSource Cooperative Services. The Honorary Recognition Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions toward the development of agriculture, protection of natural resources and improvement of rural living. Since 1909, the College has recognized 499 individuals for outstanding service to their communities, to their chosen career fields, and to citizens of the state and nation.
As chief operating officer of AgSource Cooperative Services, Peter Giacomini has helped create one of the preeminent organizations in the business of helping farmers use science based tools to improve their profitability. In the early 1990's AgSource (then known as Wisconsin DHI Cooperative) was a dairy herd improvement cooperative limited in service to Wisconsin. The firm is now the largest full service DHI organization in the country and is one of the largest providers of feed, food, environmental, and agronomic testing services in the nation. In 1992 he collaborated with others in the industry to create CRI, America's first agricultural holding cooperative. He worked with the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine to introduce the transition cow index, an innovative technique to monitor dairy-cow performance. He has leadership in many dairy industry organizations. He is currently the chair of the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives board of directors and recently completed a term as the chair of the U.S. Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding. He was a 1997 recipient of the National DHIA Management Award.
Giacomini graduated from UW-Madison in 1979 with degrees in dairy science and agricultural economics and has since provided invaluable service to his alma mater. He is chair-elect of the CALS Board of Visitors, has served on advisory committees of both the Department of Dairy Science and the Center for Dairy Profitability, and spent many years advocating for the college at the Federal level as a Wisconsin delegate on the Council for Agricultural Research Extension and Teaching.
Other recipients of the award included James Behnke, Linda Bochert, and Richard Renk. Robert Cropp received the Distinguished Service Award.
