American Vegetable Grower Columnist And Rutgers Extension Agent Receives Distinguished Service Award

Rutgers Cooperative Extension Agricultural Agent and American Vegetable Grower magazine columnist, Richard VanVranken, was the recipient of a Distinguished Service Citation from the New Jersey Department Agriculture at the state agriculture convention held in Atlantic City on Feb. 4.

“Rick VanVranken has served New Jersey’s agriculture industry with passion, dedication and enthusiasm for decades,” said New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher. “His wealth of knowledge and knack for innovation and promotion has made him an indispensable resource for our farmers in South Jersey.”

VanVranken earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in vegetable crops from Cornell University, coming to New Jersey in 1983 to serve for the last 32 years as Agricultural Agent at Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Atlantic County. Now at the rank of professor, he heads the county extension office, as well as writes a marketing column for American Vegetable Grower.

VanVranken is well known for his work in ethnic and specialty crop development.  He is co-founder of the Ethnic Produce Production and Marketing Working Group, a multi-state, multi-disciplinary team of extension agents, specialists and researchers from Rutgers, UMass, Cornell, Penn State, and University of Florida that researches and conducts outreach programming on the marketing and production potential of new ethnic crops for East Coast farmers.

He established the WorldCrops.org website that helps farmers determine the produce needs of ethnic communities and how to grow those crops. His leadership in developing these new markets was recently recognized with the Northeast Region Excellence in Extension award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

VanVranken co-organizes and delivers an Integrated Crop Management Twilight Meeting series to update growers and agribusiness representatives on timely disease, insect and weed identification and control, integrated pest management practices, pesticide regulations and worker protection standards.  He develops and chairs educational sessions for the Annual New Jersey Vegetable Meetings, and helped create and is a regular contributor to the Rutgers Plant and Pest Advisory-Vegetable Crops newsletter.

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