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  • From: RBAIRSTOW.parti@parti.inforum.org
  • To: PERMACULTURE-MG@amani.ces.ncsu.edu
  • Subject: RE: RODALE INSTITUTE (APOLOGIES FOR CROSS
  • Date: Sun, 13 Aug 95 01:10:00 -0400

POSTINGS)
Reply-to: RBAIRSTOW.parti@parti.inforum.org
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Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Healthy People

Rodale Institute
611 Siegfriedale Rd., Kutztown, PA 19530
Tel: (610) 683-1400 Fax: (610) 683-8548
____________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Scott Overholt
August 8, 1995
610-967-8497
scottrodin@aol.com


Rodale Institute announced today the formation of its Global
Programs and Global Communications structure. "Our mission is to work
with people worldwide to achieve a regenerative food system that
enhances environmental and human health," says Anthony Rodale, Vice
Chair of the Institute. "Our research has proven it can be done. We
know people want it. Our next challenge is to make the successful
ideas available and useful to everyone."

Global Programs, headed by Jonathon Landeck, will operate
Regenerative Agriculture Resource Centers (RARCs) in Senegal,
Guatemela, Russia and the United States. The U.S. RARC will be
directed by Laurie Drinkwater.

"The RARCs work with farmers on their own land" notes Landeck.
"It's how ideas and research are put to work to benefit people. Our
success in Senegal and Guatemela showed that this approach works
best. The communications program will spread the successes of the
RARCs even further."

The RARC model emphasizes on-farm applied research, demonstration
and communication. It uses the land of the participating farmers
themselves to develop and extend regenerative farming practices using
local resources.

Jonathon Landeck earned his doctorate in Agricultural Extension
Education from Michigan State University, and an M.S. in soil science
from Texas A&M. He is fluent in French, and conversational in
Spanish. Landeck's career includes diversified assignments in the
U.S. and Africa.

Laurie Drinkwater earned a PhD in Zoology At the University of
California, Davis, where she applied her emphasis in ecology and
invertebrate biology to the study of soil life in the Deparment of
Vegetable Crops. Drinkwater joined Rodale Institute in 1993.

The Rodale Institute Research Center, in Kutztown, PA, has been
renamed the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm. "The new name
reflects our ongoing committment to innovative experimentation, as
well as our desire to make it a more integrated, organic farm,"
explains Rodale. "We develop and demonstrate successful organic
methods for growing healthy food for people, using compost as the
main soil regeneration technology."

The farm will be a complete center for research, education and
communication. Currently, a two-acre site is being prepared for
Rodale's new School of Practical Composting. The School is a
five-day, intensive course on commercial scale composting, based on
what Rodale researchers are learning from their three-year-old
Compost Utilization Trial.

The new structure significantly enhances the staff at Rodale
Institute. Dr. Amadou Diop, the current Senegal RARC director and
recipient of the 1995 Award for Excellence in Development from the
Center for the African Cause, has been named Technical Director of
Global Programs. Diop earned a doctorate in agronomy from Oregon
State University. He is fluent in Russian, French, English, and
Spanish.

In addition, a Socio-economic Director will be hired to give Rodale
Institute greater capability in gender-related programming (to
increase women's participation), community development, and
monitoring and evaluation.

"Agricultural research should have as its ultimate goal the health
of people, environment, and communities," declares John Haberern,
President of Rodale Institute. The soil provides us with life. The
quality of that life depends on the quality of the soil itself. We
believe farmers and farming practices can contribute a lot to the
health of people worldwide."

To begin to reconnect soil, food and human health in the minds of
the leading scientists in each field, and to connect the scientists
and the fields themselves, Rodale Institute is working with Tufts
University to plan the first International Conference on the Effects
of Farming Practices on Food Quality. The conference is expected to
be held in late summer, 1997, co-sponsored by Tuft's Center for
Agriculture, Food and the Environment.

"Can you imagine what will happen when a farmer, a nutritionist and
a doctor get face to face and realize they are connected to each
other in the chain of health, and that what each does affects us all?
We're attempting to break down the barriers of specialization and
get back to the whole picture."

Rodale Institute is also collaborating with the World Bank, in an
affort to ensure that future agricultural projects funded by the bank
are designed to regenerate, not deplete, local soil and other
resources. A workshop to develop project assessment criteria is
being held at the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm August 14 - 15.
Paul O'Connell, the first Director of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Center for Alternative Agriculture Research and
Commercialization (AARC) is representing Rodale Institute in the
Agriculture and Natural Resources Department of the World Bank.

The Institute's plans for 1996 include adding new education and
electronic communication activities. "Our research has given us all
the confidence to move forward and talk with consumers, policymakers,
food industry leaders and youth about the idea that what they eat and
how it's grown has a lot to do with how long they live, how good they
feel, and how secure they are. We'll be spreading our resources more
evenly between research and commmunication," Haberern explains.

Global Communications, directed by Scott Overholt, will operate the
Rodale Institute Experimental Farm as an education center, and
develop the Institute's publishing capacity, with an emphasis on
electronic communication.

The Global Communications group will be charged with setting up a
global communications hub, where information on regenerative and
organic agriculture, and their relation to environmental and human
health, will be gathered, organized and disseminated. Electronic
communications will be added to Rodale Institute's traditional
strength in print publishing and database management. Rodale
Institute's Russia RARC has already applied a successful
communications model in that country which will be adapted to Rodale
Institute's U.S. headquarters in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

All of Rodale Institute's people and programs will continue to focus
on growing organic foods using regenerative principles.

"We have been working to show the vital link between healthy soil,
healthy food and healthy people since my grandfather first said it in
1947, says Anthony Rodale. "Our organization started small and
humbly with thirty acres and an idea. Because of the support we've
received from around the world, Rodale Institute is prepared to lead
the way into a future where what's good for people and what's good
for the earth are seen as the same - where there needn't be any
tradeoffs, one for the other. If we feed the soil, the soil will
feed us. It's nature's way."

"It's amazing how many people feel that way now, how many allies we
have, how many successes there are. Our goal at Rodale Institute is
to bring it all together, and make the tools for success available to
everyone, everywhere."

* *
*

Rodale Institute is an independent, non-profit organization under
section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. It is a publicly-supported
charity and is not affiliated with Rodale Press or any other
for-profit corporation.



  • RE: RODALE INSTITUTE (APOLOGIES FOR CROSS, RBAIRSTOW . parti, 08/13/1995

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