Subject: RE: RODALE INSTITUTE (APOLOGIES FOR CROSS

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 95 01:10:00 -0400

POSTINGS)
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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
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Scott Overholt
August 8, 1995                                             
610-967-8497
[email-masked]

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."

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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.