Contributions by Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer to effective and responsible water management in agriculture
Introduction
Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer were the first three, successive Editors-in-Chief (EICs) of Agricultural Water Management (Oster et al., 2006). All three are of Dutch origin, received their early training immediately after World War II, and started their careers in the early 1950s by studying various aspects of agricultural drainage. Later their interests diverged. Jans Wesseling became Head of the Department of Water Management of the Institute for Land and Water Management Research at Wageningen, The Netherlands, where with his team he focussed on regional water management. Jan van Schilfgaarde held a wide variety of leadership positions in the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), eventually paying much attention to irrigation agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions. Herman Bouwer focussed on artificial recharge of groundwater and also served as Director of the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory of the USDA-ARS at Phoenix, Arizona. Serving as successive Editors-in Chief in the later parts of their careers, they brought to the journal Agricultural Water Management a wide variety of experience. In this paper we review the circumstances and the highlights of their contributions to responsible management of water in agriculture.
The outline of this paper is as follows. In Section 2, we describe the state of agricultural water management research around 1950, both in The Netherlands and in the USA. In Sections 3 Jans Wesseling, 3.1 Youth in the province of Drenthe and training at Wageningen Agricultural University (1945–1956), 3.2 Institute for Land and Water Management Research (ICW) (1957–1986), 3.2.1 Agrohydrological research (1957–1972), 3.2.2 Management of the Department of Water Management (1973–1986), 3.3 Service as educator, 3.4 Recognition, 4 Jan van Schilfgaarde, 4.1 Youth at The Hague and training at Hope College (Michigan) and Iowa State College (1946–1954), 4.2 North Carolina State University (1954–1964), 4.3 USDA-ARS-SWCRD (1964–1997), 4.3.1 Beltsville, Maryland Headquarters of USDA-ARS-SWCRD (1964–1972), 4.3.2 U.S. Salinity Laboratory (USSL) at Riverside, California (1972–1984), 4.3.3 A long round trip from California to Beltsville (1984–1997), 4.3.4 Attention for worldwide problems, 4.4 Recognition, 5 Herman Bouwer, we describe the careers of, respectively, Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer. We describe their training, document their early scientific contributions, especially in the realm of agricultural drainage, and briefly highlight their later service as research managers. In Section 6, we present some concluding remarks.
Section snippets
The Netherlands
In 1952 the journal Soil Science published a special issue on Soil Science in the Netherlands, providing an overview of the state of soil science and water management (Anon., 1952). The special issue opens with a description of Dutch agriculture by W.C. Visser of the Government Service for Land Improvement, Drainage, and Reallocation at Utrecht. Dutch soils and water control are described, respectively, by C.H. Edelman and F. Hellinga of the State Agricultural University at Wageningen, while
Youth in the province of Drenthe and training at Wageningen Agricultural University (1945–1956)
Jans Wesseling was born in 1925 at Emmen in the province of Drenthe in the north-eastern part of The Netherlands, as one of 10 children. When he was a child his father rented a new farm in the nearby village Wijster and the family moved. After a few years at the MULO in Emmen and Beilen, he completed his high-school education at the HBS in Hoogeveen in 1944. In September 1945, he enrolled at the State Agricultural University at Wageningen, The Netherlands as student of Arable and Grassland
Youth at The Hague and training at Hope College (Michigan) and Iowa State College (1946–1954)
Jan van Schilfgaarde was born in 1929 at The Hague, The Netherlands. In 1946, after completing secondary school, he went to the USA to study on a scholarship at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Following this, rather than returning to The Netherlands, he continued his study at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) at Ames, Iowa. In 1951 Jan married Roberta Hansen. They have 3 sons and 7 grandchildren.
Jan van Schilfgaarde obtained B.Sc. (1949) and M.Sc. (1950) degrees in Agricultural
Youth at Haarlem and training at Wageningen Agricultural University and Cornell University (1945–1955)
Herman Bouwer was born in 1927 at Haarlem, The Netherlands. In a lucid autobiographical story, he writes about growing up in what for older generations is still ‘De oorlog’ (Bouwer, 2003). After graduating from high school in July 1944, he went “underground” till in May 1945 The Netherlands was liberated by the allied forces from Nazi occupation.
In September 1945, Herman Bouwer enrolled at the State Agricultural University at Wageningen. From reading books, he was fascinated by ‘life in the
Concluding remarks
World War II caused a considerable shift in the attention of Dutch scientists, away from Continental Europe and towards the Anglo-Saxon world, in particular the USA (Rupp, 1997). In the fields of agricultural water management and soil science the interaction across the Atlantic was particularly intense, especially with regard to the theory of drainage and the analysis of flow of water in unsaturated soils.
The careers of the former Editors-in-Chief reflect the great progress in the second half
Acknowledgements
We thank the three former EIC's of AGWAT and members of their families, and also Mary Beth Kirkham, Mick Fleming, Ferdinand Kastanek, Jerry Lambert, Jim Oster, and Wayne Skaggs for sharing information with us.
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