The recipient of Master Agriculturalist for 2009 is Andrew Grant

The Master Agriculturalist Award was presented to Andrew Grant, president and GM of Grant Family Farms in Wellington, for playing a major role in expandnt a small family farm into a successful organic specialty and commodity crops farm distributing product locally and nationally...

 
Grant participated in the development of the Colorado Organic program passed by the Colorado Legislature and Grant Family Farms became the first certified organic farm certified by the State of Colorado. He also developed advanced packaging, merchandising and branding of produce to a broad variety of markets. He launched a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in 2007 to connect the community to farmers and also took the lead in having the farm certified by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and SCS.

In the last 10 years, Grant Family Farms have given more than 1,000,000 pounds of fresh produce to food banks in Colorado and Texas. Grant was also Co-founder of the Tsunami Boat Project in Thailand that has built 152 new fishing boats for those that had lost their sole source of income in the Asian tsunami and has actively lobbied for immigration reform.