C Scott Stoddard

Scott grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on the outskirts of town, where he spent summers riding bikes and motorcycles, but not horses, on the hills and dirt roads around his house.  His mother was an avid gardener, but other than that he had little interest in farming or ranching.  This changed when he took his first soils class at the University of Wyoming as a basic science requirement.  This class sparked an interest in soil management and agriculture in general, and he went on to major in Soil Science at UW (BSc. 1992), then continue on at the graduate level in soil fertility at the University of Kentucky (MSc. 1995).  After graduating, Scott worked for a fertilizer company in Virginia for a short while before joining UC Cooperative Extension in Merced in 1998.  The first day on the job he spent happily setting up spray rig on a 1992 Case IH 265 row crop tractor preparing it for spray trials in cotton.  The first four years were spent working under farm advisor Bill Weir, helping on research projects in cotton, tomatoes, melons, and sweetpotatoes.  Scott is now the vegetable crops farm advisor for Merced and Madera counties, working mainly on tomatoes, sweetpotatoes and melons, with an emphasis on plant fertility, variety evaluation, and weed management.  Scott is a member of the National Sweetpotato Collaborators Group, American Society of Hort Science (ASHS), Pesticide Applicators Professional Association (PAPA), and the California Weed Science Society (CWSS).  He is a Qualified Applicator as well as a Certified Professional Agronomist (CPAg) and CCA.  While not formerly trained as a weed scientist, it was attending CWSS conferences that sparked an interest in weed management and making it a major part of his research and education program as a farm advisor.  Scott resides in Atwater, CA, with his wife Andrea and three sons.  In his free time, he hangs out with his boys at track meets, baseball games, and soccer matches.