Paying Tribute to Lisa Jasa, CropWatch Editor

Paying Tribute to Lisa Jasa, CropWatch Editor

Debbie Borg and Lisa Jasa
Debbie Borg (left), District 4 Director of the Nebraska Corn Board, presents Lisa Jasa (right), editor of UNL’s CropWatch, with the Media Appreciation Award in March of 2019.

“IANR Media, Lisa speaking.” Anyone who has called Lisa Jasa’s office would recognize those familiar words spoken with her kind voice.

Lisa shared, “This (CropWatch) was really an outgrowth of department newsletters that originated just after WWII when growers wanted the latest information on ag advances. At some point in the 1980’s, the individual department newsletters were combined as the Disease, Weed, and Insect (DWI) Newsletter. Eventually it changed to IPM or something else. Initially, these were related to pest management and agronomy stories were infrequent.”

For more than 30 years, Lisa enjoyed working with communicators and agricultural specialists and educators from across the state in addition to those representing Commodity Boards and Ag Industry. She sought timely topics and often worked late hours on Fridays or on weekends to ensure the most timely information was available to clientele. In March of 2019, Lisa accepted the Nebraska Corn Board’s Media Appreciation award for CropWatch. This award recognizes an outstanding individual or organization that helps to tell the story of Nebraska corn and Nebraska’s agriculture.

A short bout with pancreatic cancer resulted in Lisa being unable to work with CropWatch in 2020, but she continued to follow the information being shared. We lost her this past Monday, September 28th. She will be greatly missed.

She leaves behind a legacy with CropWatch, not only through the timely stories released nearly every week for almost 30 years, but in the kindness shown to everyone with whom she interacted and the relationships she built along the way. Thank you Lisa! CropWatch