Donation ensures Ben Stinner’s legacy

WOOSTER, Ohio – The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has donated $100,000 to the Ben Stinner Endowment for Healthy Agroecosystems and Sustainable Communities.
The fund was recently established by Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.
Work will go on. The fund will continue Stinner’s lifework in agroecology, promoting sustainable agriculture and sustainable communities.
Stinner – holder of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation-endowed chair in ecological management in Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and a professor of entomology at the research center’s Wooster campus – died Nov. 23 in an automobile accident. He was 50.
Stinner joined Ohio State as an assistant professor in 1982 and worked on research center’s Wooster campus ever since.
In addition to the $100,000 donation, Kellogg permitted the transfer of an additional $100,000 from the existing fund to help establish the Stinner endowment.
Support. Since Stinner’s tragic death, his friends, colleagues and dozens whose lives he touched have contributed more than $50,000 to the endowment.
“Ben had an extraordinary ability to connect with people, focus their energy on what matters, and inspire them to achieve. He was a natural leader,” said co-worker and fellow entomologist Casey Hoy.
Stinner’s work is being continued by his many friends, colleagues and stakeholders who participate in management program activities.
A grassroots effort from its inception, the program has brought together citizens, Ohio State faculty, staff and students on a wide range of projects that lead to sustainability – a balance between environmental, social and economic goals.
Projects. Most of the projects to date have been initiated by farmers, conservationists, educators and entrepreneurs.
“He is here,” said Deborah Stinner, Ben’s widow, a member of the program and the leader of research center’s Organic Food Farming Education and Research program.
“He will continue to live through our work,” she said.
Stinner was an international leader in the areas of agroecology and sustainable agriculture.
He made significant research and outreach contributions in the ecology and economics of whole-farm systems, arthropod ecology, nutrient cycling, the role of organic matter in soil fertility, and the ecology of Amish farming.