Howard F. Lyman, LL.D

Howard F. Lyman is a fourth-generation family farmer from Montana. He worked in agriculture for almost forty years and has learnt, through extensive personal experience, that chemically-based agricultural production methods are unsustainable and ecologically disastrous.

As a farmer, Howard worked in an organic dairy, owned a large factory feedlot and farmed thousands of acres of crops, including wheat, barley, oats, corn, alfalfa and grass. He reproduced a herd of more than 1,000 commercial beef cows, and has raised chickens, pigs and turkeys.

In 1979, a tumour on Howard's spinal cord paralysed him from the waist down and changed his life forever. On recovery from surgery, which enabled him to walk again, Howard followed through on a promise he had made when the tumour was discovered: to do what was right, no matter the cost.

He founded Voice for a Viable Future, an organization of which he is still president, and became a vegan. He was sued, along with Oprah Winfrey, in the infamous "meat defamation trial", and is happy to be known as 'the mad cowboy'.