Dr. Justin McMechan Honored with the 2026 Larry Tonniges Research Achievement Award

Dr. Justin McMechan Honored with the 2026 Larry Tonniges Research Achievement Award

Apr 28, 2026

FARMING FOR ANSWERS
Dr. Justin McMechan built his research program around the problems Nebraska farmers were already facing. Receiving the Larry Tonniges Research Achievement Award from the people he works for made it all hit home. He thought he was walking into a room to defend his research proposals. He wasn't.
At its March 2026 meeting, the Nebraska Soybean Board named Dr. Justin McMechan the recipient of the Larry Tonniges Research Achievement Award-given to individuals whose soybean research creates real, measurable value for Nebraska farmers. The award was established by the family of the late Larry Tonniges, a longtime Nebraska farmer who championed production research as part of his service on the board. McMechan is an Associate Professor of Entomology at UNL with a combination Extension and Research appointment, splitting his time between East Campus in Lincoln and ENREEC near Mead. The surprise caught him at a loss for words. For a researcher who's spent years standing in front of rooms full of farmers, that's saying something.

STILL A FARMER AT HEART
McMechan grew up on a small farm in Manitoba, Canada, where farming was always the plan. He eventually found his way to Nebraska for his education, which didn't take him far from the field. He plants every research plot himself. He sprays. He harvests. And when it's time to plant, he's right there on the farm - his "right-sized" two-row planter running alongside the farmer's 12- and 16-row equipment, working the same field setting, talking through the same questions. "I'm still kind of a farmer at heart," he said. "It's just... I'm farming for education. And it's honestly more gratifying, because I get to help this whole community."

SCIENCE AS A SERVICE
McMechan's research program runs on a simple premise: farmers identify the problem, then he goes to find the answer. Roundtable discussions with farmers, consultants and ag professionals shaped his research priorities from the start. Proposals followed-not because they were interesting to researchers, but because farmers said they mattered. The Nebraska Soybean Board funded them for the same reason. That's still how it works. "It's 100 percent the foundation of how I formed my program," he said. He runs small-plot research at five to 10 farm locations across Nebraska each season, looking for solutions that are practical and don't add cost. When results come back, farmers recognize them. "If we build it together," McMechan said, "it fits somewhere on the farming operation already."

RESEARCH FOCUS AREAS

• Pests in cover crop-to-corn systems
• Corn ear abnormalities
• Soybean gall midge biology and management
• Hail damage in row crops
• At-plant tactics like depth, row spacing, tillage

FILLING THE GAPS ON GALL MIDGE
When soybean gall midge was first identified in 2019, the Nebraska Soybean Board pushed for emergency funding within roughly 90 days-a rare move that put Nebraska at the front of the research. That foundation still holds. The pest is unlike anything soybean growers had faced before, and getting answers has been a slow process of filling in gaps. McMechan describes it this way: you put a box on your head and poke one hole. That's your entire field of vision. As research advances, more holes get poked, and the picture comes into greater focus. Right now, that focus is on variety selection. Two years of planting farmer-supplied seed in controlled settings revealed mortality rates ranging from 6 to 70 percent, depending on variety. When McMechan asked a group of farmers what that information was worth to their operation, the average answer was $30,000. That kind of impact is exactly what he shows up to find and exactly what the Larry Tonniges Research Achievement Award was created to recognize.

"To get an award from farmers-feels like a pinnacle moment in my career. It's why I do this work. I work for farmers. For them to see value in what I do, and to life me out as an individual-it's hard to put into words. It's the core of why I do what I do."