In Memoriam: Bill Heffernan
I wanted to share an obituary with readers of The Cocklebur today. We lost one of the finest human beings I’ve ever know last week. Bill Heffernan, who many know from his long and impactful career explaining corporate control and concentration of agriculture markets as a Rural Sociologist, passed September 11, 2024. He lived a big and truly meaningful life.
Bill was a friend and mentor to me. He was one of the handful of professors at the University of Missouri who changed my life. Bill’s class on corporate power in agriculture, based on the famous concentration tables, helped set me on a path of fighting against industrial agriculture. He helped me to understand how the big meatpackers were driving many livestock farmers and small town butchershops (like the one my family owned when I was growing up) out of business.
Rest in Peace, Bill. And thank you for everything you’ve done for rural America. We appreciate you, and we’ll miss you.
—Bryce (Publisher, The Cocklebur)
Obituary
William "Bill" Davey Heffernan, University of Missouri Professor Emeritus, passed away peacefully on the morning of September 11, 2024 in Columbia, Missouri while holding his daughter's hand. Bill spent the final weeks of his life surrounded by the family, friends, love, laughter, stories and music that defined his life.
Born March 11, 1939 in Waterloo, Iowa, and raised on his family’s farm in Bremer County, Bill witnessed remarkable changes in rural America first hand. He began farming while riding alongside his father behind a team of horses in the early 1940s. Nearly eight decades later he drove his grandson across the fields while Nathan used a drone to film the computer-guided combine harvesting the wheat. Bill’s experiences led to his life-long passion for understanding rural communities and the food system.
Bill attended a one-room school until 8th grade and then graduated from Frederika High School in a class of twelve. He completed his bachelors degree at Iowa State University in 1961 before returning home to join his family's farm operation. However, after traveling in Iran as a delegate with the International Farm Youth Exchange program, he became increasingly interested in studying rural issues. Bill left the farm to pursue a doctorate in Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he met his wife and research partner, Judith Bortner. After their wedding on June 18, 1966, they moved to Baton Rouge where Bill became an assistant professor at Louisiana State University. In 1969, he accepted a position with the Rural Sociology Department at the University of Missouri Columbia, where he earned tenure and eventually served as department chair. He retired in 2000.
As Bill once explained, “I have been taught that one’s obligations as a researcher do not end until the findings have been communicated.” This philosophy of “advocacy and activism” led him to be a fierce advocate for farm families and rural communities. During the devastating farm crisis of the 1980s, Bill and Judy became known as “farm stress experts” as they presented results from their 1984 study regarding the experiences of families forced off of their farms for financial reasons in one Missouri county. They spoke in 33 states and 6 provinces of Canada to a variety of groups, including Extension staff, local and national farm organizations, legislators, mental health experts, bankers, and numerous religious leaders. Journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Time, national television networks, National Public Radio, wire services, and numerous other organizations interviewed them. For this work, the Missouri Ruralist magazine named them "Man and Woman of the Year in Missouri Agriculture" in 1987, and they were honored by National Catholic Rural Life with the Isidore and Maria Exemplary Award.
Bill’s early research on the community impacts of contract poultry production led him to study consolidation in the food system in the 1990s and share that knowledge with farmers. Working with graduate and undergraduate students, Bill collected data on the percentage of agricultural commodity markets controlled by the top four firms and disseminated copies of these “concentration tables” to farmers, community members and policymakers. At presentations, he was often asked what we could do to change the food system and in response he advocated for sustainable agriculture, community food systems like Food Circles, and policy changes. He and his team prepared two seminal reports on consolidation in the food system in 1999 and 2001, commissioned by National Farmers Union and used to brief Congressional staffers. In 2006, he received the organization’s Meritorious Service Award To Agriculture and to World Agriculture. Bill’s leadership led him to serve as the president of the Rural Sociological Society in 1987-1988. He also served on the boards of the Kerr Center, Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI-USA), and was a founding member of the Missouri Farmers Union and the Organization for Competitive Markets.
In addition to his academic research and outreach, Bill loved teaching and advising at Mizzou. His most impactful legacy is that of his students. As one rural advocate noted, “He has left behind a huge cadre of skilled scholars that will lift us up for decades to come.” He and Judy cared for his students as scholars and people, becoming a family away from home and providing numerous opportunities for them to build skills, confidence and networks as rural sociologists.
Bill, Judy, and their daughter, Lisa, also farmed. They started raising cattle in the early 1970s in Callaway County, then expanded to growing soybeans, wheat and corn. Bill’s academic and farm interests aligned when he served as a board member to the American Livestock Breeds Conversancy. In the late 1980s, Bill purchased St. Croix hair sheep, and descendants of these still graze on the farms of Lisa and a few former graduate students. In the early 1990s, Bill and Judy purchased a farm in western Boone County. Community members informed them that this was the historic Model Farm of Missouri, as well as the site of Lexington, Boone County’s first pioneer settlement from the 1810s. Bill immediately understood that they would be the stewards of this land, both preserving the history and the soil. As part of his University of Missouri Extension position, Bill had advocated for soil conservation starting in the late-1970s and integrated the concepts into his own farming practices. In 2014, his decades-long focus on soil conservation led Gina McCarthy, head of the EPA under President Obama, to tour the farm.
Bill was known for his twinkling eyes, warm humor, joyous laugh, lively storytelling and generous kindness. Family legend tells that one year Bill didn’t receive a salary increase because his department chair thought he laughed too much, despite having the most publications in the department that year. Bill shared stories and bits of wisdom that his family and students continue to share with others. He was a playful dad, grandpa, uncle and mentor who always made the children and young people around him feel valued and empowered. We will carry on this legacy.
Bill is survived by his wife Judith of Columbia, daughter Lisa Heffernan Weil of Columbia, and grandson Nathan Heffernan Weil of Burlington, Vermont; nephew Eric Potter (Dana) of Dallas, Texas. He is also survived by his brother Keith Heffernan (Alexa) of Cedar Falls, Iowa, his sister Karen Heffernan Day of Sioux City, Iowa; and numerous nieces and nephews whom he adored. He was preceded in death by his parents, William Howard and Alvesta Davey Heffernan, and his sisters Jean Heffernan Schwarzenstein and Ann Heffernan Potter.