Philip A. Rutter

Badgersett Research Farm, RR 1, Box 141, Canton, MN 55922, (507)-743-8570,

Born: Bethesda, Maryland, USA; October 21, 1948, divorced, two children
Education:
BA Oberlin College, 1970; with High Honors in Biology; Major- Biology.
MS University of Minnesota, 1975; Zoology

Additional- All course work for the PhD in Zoology, with minor in Ecology and 
Behavior, was completed at the University of Minnesota by 1975. At that time I 
realized that the university academic world was not what I wanted for my future, 
and the decision was made to leave and start Badgersett Research Farm. While the 
PhD work was in the field of Zoology, the underlying interest was always evolution 
and ecology, with strong interest in plants and plant communities.

Academic Honors:
Sigma Xi scientific honorary society; elected 1969
High Honors in Biology, Oberlin College, 1970
National Science Foundation Trainee, 1970-73
Teaching Asst, Dept. of Biology, U of Minnesota, 1973-74
Teaching Asst, Dept. of Ecology & Behavior, U of Minnesota, '74-75
Guest Scientist, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, P. R. China, 1989 and 1991

National Award:
Good Steward Award; National Arbor Day Foundation, 1996

Career achievements:

Founder, owner, and Director, Badgersett Research Farm- 1977- 1998
President/CEO, Badgersett Research Corporation, 1998-present

Badgersett Farm started as a privately owned and operated, shoestring budget,
research and development enterprise, with the primary goal of pursuing the
intensive domestication of woody perennial plants for agriculture. Research
includes breeding projects with multi-species hybrid chestnuts and hazels.
More than 8,000 hybrid chestnuts have been screened at Badgersett with 10,000
currently under evaluation. Hazel plantings consist of some 60,000 bushes,
mostly young. Several thousand new trees are planted annually, for both
screening for crop potential and small-scale commercial demonstration. One to
three undergraduate interns are usually accepted each summer. In 1992 the
decision to begin commercial production of our hybrid hazelnut seedlings was
made, and a greenhouse constructed to enable us to produce some 70,000
containerized plants/year. These seedlings will form the nucleus for a new
hazelnut industry in the upper Midwest. More than 2,000 potential growers
have already expressed interest in trying these plants. The first commercial
trial plantings began in 1993, in locations from Virginia to Idaho. In 1994
major demonstration plantings were made on military bases in Kansas, Nebraska
and Minnesota; in 1995, plantings began for 9 acres of production hazels at
Arbor Day Farm, NE

Co-Founder, The American Chestnut Foundation- 1982
The Foundation is a national non-profit {501(c)(3)}, membership organization,
incorporated in
Washington, D.C. The goal of the Foundation is the restoration of the
American chestnut to our forests, for the purposes of economic, environmental, 
and moral benefit.

President, The American Chestnut Foundation- 1983- 1992
President Emeritus, The American Chestnut Foundation- elected 1992
  In acknowledgement of service, the Board elected me President Emeritus, with
a lifetime seat on the Board.
Member, Board of Directors, The American Chestnut Foundation- 1982- present
Member, Scientific Steering Committee, American Chestnut Foundation-1983-1992
Chairman, Fundraising Committee, The American Chestnut Foundation, 1985-90
  During my tenure as Fundraising Chair, income increased from $15,000 to
$100,000/yr.

President, Northern Nut Growers Association, 1989-90.
The NNGA is an 80 year-old national organization of professionals and
amateurs who grow and develop nut crops
Member, Board of Directors, Northern Nut Growers Association, 1990-93.

Consultant to the National Geographic Society, 1988- 1989.

My work on chestnuts and TACF was featured in the February 1990 issue of
National Geographic Magazine .

Founder, The American Chestnut Foundation Wagner Research Farm, Meadowview,
Virginia. 1989.
I conceived and found the resources for this facility dedicated to TACF
chestnut research. At
present we have 20 acres, house and barn; a PhD resident superintendent, and
approximately
5,000 seedling trees growing. Plans for the future include expansion of
research plantings,
and public education facilities.
Chairman, TACF Wagner Research Farm Operating Committee, 1989-91
Reviewer, US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) global
warming book Changing by Degrees, food production section. 1990.

Activities:

Seminars- From 1984 to 1990 I gave over 60 seminars on chestnut history and
research, to both academic and general audiences. Among the lectures;

Michigan State; Ohio State; Penn State; Oberlin College; The Harvard Botanical
Museum; The Harvard Forest; Yale University; Rutgers University; The Brooklyn
Botanic Garden; The Morris Arboretum; The American Forestry Association;
Maryland Dept. of Forestry; West Virginia University; Cornell University; SUNY
Syracuse; The North Carolina Botanical Garden; The Great Smoky Mountains
National Park; the University of Tennessee; the University of Kentucky; the
USDA North Central Forest Experiment Station; SIU Carbondale; the Northern Nut
Growers Association, the University of Minnesota, and the Hubei Academy of
Agricultural Sciences (China).

Germplasm Collection Expedition- in Sept.-Nov. 1989 I managed to reach several
remote locations in Hubei Province, China, and was successful in bringing back
a unique collection of wild chestnut germplasm.

Research- primary directions have included the following:

·Chestnut Ecology- re-establishment of wild chestnut forests must be
predicated on knowledge of the natural ecology of the tree. I have stimulated
and engaged in basic descriptive ecology of the few remaining stands.

·Chestnut Pollination Biology- hybridization of chestnuts has been plagued by
erratic pollination success. I have been one of the primary researchers
developing new techniques, which are now reliable.

·Woody Agriculture- the phrase implies intensive co-production of food and
fuel from highly domesticated woody plants; sufficiently productive to
successfully replace traditional annual crops. Work has been conducted at
Badgersett Research Farm for the past 13 years, with rapid expansion of data
and plantings in the last 8 years. A basic goal of the work is to develop crop
systems with realistic scenarios for integration into the present world
agricultural systems; perennial crops which can and will be adopted, for
economic reasons. Yields comparable to annual crops have been achieved, on an
experimental basis.

Since 1990 I have given many invited seminars on woody agriculture,
including the General Mills research staff, the US EPA, the US Congressional
Office of Technology Assessment, and the U. of Minnesota Depts. of Ecology and
Agronomy. I also gave the keynote address for the "New Opportunities in
Agriculture" conference, sponsored by U. of Nebraska, 11/90.

As of 1991 the formal agreement of cooperative research and germplasm exchange
between Badgersett Research Farm and the Peoples Republic of China has been
expanded; we have 3 research plots in Hubei Province, and funding of ¥40,000
RMB/year from the provincial government.

Badgersett Research Farm is currently the recipient of a grant from the
Minnesota State Dept. of Agriculture Sustainable Agriculture Program, to
demonstrate and develop our hybrid hazelnuts for use as a cash crop-windbreak.
The grant is $16,000 for 1992-94.

·Global Warming- Implications of this work on woody agriculture have led to my
inclusion in current discussions of global warming. Papers were presented in
Washington DC to the Second North American Conference on Preparing for Climate
Change, in December 1988, and in Cairo, Egypt at the World Conference on
Preparing for Climate Change, in December 1989. A poster presentation was
made at the Forests and Global Change Conference in Washington DC, June 1991.
In 1994 the US Army and US Air Force made plantings of Badgersett hybrid
hazelnuts at 3 locations, primarily in view of the potential for woody crops
to offset global atmospheric carbon increases.

Languages: Working German; fair comprehension of Spanish and French,
rudimentary Mandarin.
Graduate Record Examination (GRE) English score: 800. Miller Analogies raw
score: 96.

Selected Professional Papers:

Rutter, P.A., and C.R. Burnham. 1982. The Minnesota chestnut program- new
promise for breeding a blight-resistant American chestnut, 73rd Annual Report
of the Northern Nut Growers Assoc. pp. 81-90.

Burnham, C.R.; P.A. Rutter.; and D.W. French. 1986. Breeding Blight-
Resistant Chestnuts. Plant Breeding Reviews, vol. 4. pp 347-397

Rutter, P.A. 1987. Chestnut ecology and the developing orcharding industry.
Proc. of the 2nd Pacific Northwest Chestnut Congress. The Chestnut Growers
Exchange, Inc., P.O. Box 12632, Portland, OR 97212

Rutter, P.A. 1987. Badgersett Research Farm; projects, goals, and plantings.
78th Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Assoc. pp.173-186

Rutter, P.A. 1987; 4th edition, 1990. A chestnut pollinator's handbook. 20
pages, diagrams. Available from Badgersett.

Rutter, P.A. 1989. Reducing Earth's "greenhouse" CO2 through shifting staples
production to woody plants. Proc. of the Second North American Conference on
Preparing for Climate Change, pp 208-213. The Climate Institute, 316
Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 403, Washington, DC 20003

Paillet, F.L., and P.A. Rutter.. 1989. Replacement of native oak and
hickory tree species by the introduced American chestnut (Castanea dentata) in
southwestern Wisconsin. Canadian Journal of Botany , vol. 67, #12; pp
3457-3469

Rutter, P.A. 1990. Growing Chestnut Trees: The American Chestnut Foundation
Handbook. The American Chestnut Foundation, College of Agriculture and
Forestry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506-6057. 13 pages

Rutter, P.A. 1990. Woody agriculture: increased carbon fixation and co-
production of food and fuel. Paper presented to the World Conference on
Preparing for Climate Change, Cairo, Egypt, December 1989. The Climate
Institute, Washington DC. reprinted IN: 80th Annual Report of the Northern Nut
Growers Assoc.

Rutter, P.A., G. Miller, and J. Payne. 1990. Chestnuts (Castanea) . In:
Genetic Resources of Temperate Fruits and Nuts. J.N. Moore & Ballington, J.R.
Jr., eds. International Society for Horticultural Science. Acta Horticultura
290; pp 761-788

Rutter, P.A. 1992. A new experimental approach to producing self rooted
chestnut clones. 82nd Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Assoc.