Frederick Howard Buttel (October 15, 1948, Freeport, Illinois – January 14, 2005, Madison, Wisconsin) was the William H. Sewell Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
[1] His father was a farmer, his mother a school teacher.
[2] Prior to returning as a faculty member to Wisconsin, he served as a member of the faculty at Michigan State University and Cornell University.
Buttel was editor of the journal, Research in Rural Sociology and Development,[3] and co-editor of Society & Natural Resources.
Buttel was a scholar in rural sociology whose research focused on four major areas of study: the sociology of agriculture, environmental sociology, technological change in agriculture, and national and global activism relating to environmental and agricultural policies.