Gilkey, Barnes Receive National Ginner Awards

The National Cotton Ginners Association (NCGA) honored Kirk Gilkey as the 2018 Horace Hayden National Cotton Ginner of the Year, and Dr. Ed Barnes as recipient of the 2018-19 Charles C. Owen Distinguished Service Award.

The awards were presented during NCGA’s recent annual meeting in San Antonio.

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The National Cotton Ginner of the Year award is presented in recognition of able, efficient and faithful service to the ginning industry, and continuing those principles exemplified and practiced by Horace Hayden, a former NCGA executive secretary.

Gilkey, manager of the Cross-Creek II Gin in Corcoran, CA, is a National Cotton Council (NCC) director, served for many years on the NCC’s Joint Industry Bale Packaging Committee and previously chaired the NCC’s Packaging and Flow Program Committee. He was president and chairman of the NCGA in 2010 and 2011, and has served either as chairman or as a member of most of NCGA’s committees and subcommittees.

He also has been very active in the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association, including serving as chairman of the California Cotton Ginners Association in 1996. He was named the association’s California Ginner of the Year in 2000.

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Gilkey also serves as general manager of Gilkey Farming Enterprises and as general manager and a partner of Gilkey Five, a freight shipping and trucking company.

The NCGA’s Charles C. Owen Distinguished Service Award honors those who have provided a career of distinguished service to the U.S. ginning industry.

Barnes, senior director for Cotton Incorporated’s Agricultural and Environmental Research Division in Cary, NC, worked as an Extension engineer at Oklahoma State University, and as a USDA Agricultural Research Service agricultural engineer the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, AZ before joining Cotton Incorporated in 2002. He was named director of the Agricultural and Environmental Research Division in 2007.

Barnes serves as an advisor on the NCC’s Bale Packaging Committee and is a member of the NCGA’s Technology Committee.

Barnes has been a member of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) for 30 years. He served as chair of its Engineering for Sustainability Committee, is a trustee of its Foundation, and has been an ASABE fellow since 2017. In 2013, he was awarded the National Conservations Systems Precision Agricultural Researcher of the Year award, and in 2014, the ASABE Mayfield Cotton Engineer of the Year Award.

Barnes received his B.S. and M.S. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering from North Carolina State University and his doctorate at Oklahoma State University.

 

Based on information provided by the National Cotton Council

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