ISPFMRA honors Colleen Callahan

February 16, 2021 at 11:30 am CST

Colleen Callahan accepts the Outstanding Service to Agriculture Award from Rob Woodrow of the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. This is the highest recognition the society bestows on a non-member. Callahan was cited for “her lifetime career of working with and for Illinois farmers and agriculture in general.” The award was officially presented at the society’s annual meeting, which was held Jan. 28.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Colleen Callahan, director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, was honored during the annual meeting of the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers by being named the 2021 recipient of the organization’s Outstanding Service to Agriculture Award.

Making the presentation was Rob Woodrow, immediate past president of the society.

“There have been some broadcasters who have received this award since it was started in 1941, but none with the breadth of a lifelong commitment to the state’s farmers and agriculture in general. She lives and breathes our agriculture and is obviously very proud of it,” Woodrow said.

Woodrow noted that Callahan graduated from the University of Illinois in 1973 and went to work as a farm broadcaster and agribusiness reporter. She worked at WMBD-AM and television and WGFA.

Callahan was also the first female to be named Farm Broadcaster of the Year by the National Association of Farm Broadcasters in 1999 and was named to that group’s Hall of Fame in 2011.

In 2009, she was tapped by the Obama administration to serve as the Illinois state director of U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development and in 2019 was named to her current post as director of the Illinois DNR.

She and her husband, Dick Burns, operate a cattle farm just east of Kickapoo.