By Bill Spiegel, Byline Editor
With the deadline looming for the 2026 ACN Awards Contest, it’s worth looking back to the first honorees of the then-AAEA Awards, which date to 1969, according to the book, “Farm Magazines, Milestones and Memories.”
That year, Syl Marking, with “The Farmer” magazine, won Writer of the Year. The first Photographer of the Year was awarded in 1973 and was earned by Bill Fleming, then with BEEF magazine.
But we have to go back a few more decades for the inaugural AAEA Distinguished Service Award, presented to Liberty Hyde Bailey in 1947. A Michigan native, Bailey founded the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University in 1903 and was its Dean until 1913. He was a renowned scholar in social and political issues affecting rural America and agriculture from 1913 until his death in 1954.