The Early Years of the LISA, SARE, and ACE Programs
Reflections of the Founding Directorby J. Patrick Madden
Conception | Phase I | Phase II | Phase III
References | Glossary
Appendix I | Appendix II | Appendix III
Preface...
It was my privilege to help establish the LISA sustainable agriculture competitive grants program and its successors, SARE and ACE. (These acronyms are defined in the glossary.) Others who played important roles include George Bird, Brian Chabot, Senator Tom Daschel, John Haberern, Chuck Hassebrook, Ferd Hoefner, Dixon Hubbard, Fred Kirschenmann, Chuck Laughlin, Senator Patrick Leahy, Fred Magdoff, Kathleen Merrigan, Paul O'Connell, Bob Rodale, Neill Schaller, Sandy Schlecker, David Schlegel, Karl Stauber, Steve Waller, and Garth Youngberg, among many others. However, the real heroes are the hundreds of farmers, scientists, and educators who are developing and promoting more sustainable farming systems.This account of the early years of the national sustainable agriculture research and education programs was prepared initially in 1995, under a contract between the SARE Program and the World Sustainable Agriculture Association, of which I was then President. The contract called for examination of the documents contained in multiple file cabinets accumulated during my almost seven years with the Program. The current version has benefited greatly from corrections and recommendations offered by reviewers, especially Jill Auburn, Paula Ford, Neill Schaller, David Schlegel, and Steve Waller.
I view this personal account as an archive for historians (of which I am not one) who may wish to compile a truly comprehensive history of the Program at some future date. This effort would require gleaning information from files left by my colleagues and myself, and by correlating information from other sources. Therefore the reader should view this document merely as archival material, not as a complete and exhaustive history of the SARE and ACE Programs and their predecessor, the LISA Program.
No report of this kind is ever completely "objective". The best an author can do is to be explicit where interpretive judgments are rendered, and to provide the reader with a basis for understanding the positions taken by the author. In preparing this document, I have endeavored to stick closely to the facts as revealed in selected letters, notes, and other documents in my files. Nonetheless, many personal opinions are clearly evident to the discerning reader. The selection criterion I used for inclusion of materials in this report was the potential contribution to future sustainable agriculture efforts. A brief autobiographical summary is included in the Appendix, as an aid to understanding the author's perspective.
I have deeply appreciated the opportunity to help establish and shape the LISA, ACE and SARE. May they prove to be "sustainable".
J. Patrick Madden
May 1998
May 1998