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The Early Years of the LISA, SARE, and ACE Programs

Conception Of The Program

During the Dust Bowl of the 1930's Americans became alarmed about the rapid deterioration of agricultural productivity caused by ill-advised farming practices and adverse weather. Federal and state government programs to prevent soil erosion stemmed from that crisis. The sustainable agriculture movement of the past decade reflects a continuation and deepening of that concern. While soil erosion remains a serious problem in many places, the goal of the sustainable agriculture movement is much broader. A primary motivation is elimination of the damage chemical-intensive farming methods inflict on human health, natural ecosystems, water quality, soil health, and long-term productivity. Sustainable agriculture is a goal: to make food and farming systems ecologically beneficial, economically sound, socially acceptable, and based on interdisciplinary scientific knowledge (Madden and Chaplowe 1997: 3-32).

Early Motivational Factors

The first seeds of what has grown into the SARE Program were sown in 1962 by the publication of Rachel Carson's classic book, Silent Spring. This book was the first highly popular and definitive work highlighting the ecological damage being done by agricultural pesticides. Until this time, it was generally believed that pesticides were harmless to the environment, and when used properly, posed no threat to human health and water quality. Mounting concern by environmentalists and others in the 1960's led to formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to increasingly severe restrictions on use of agricultural chemicals. Public awareness of environmental and health risks has dawned slowly, as more scientific evidence has emerged (Benbrook 1996, Hewitt and Smith 1995).

A very important publication in the history of the U. S. sustainable agriculture movement is the USDA Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming (USDA 1980). This report, ordered by Secretary of Agriculture Bergland in 1979, compiled and interpreted scientific evidence regarding the yield, net returns, and other performance indicators of organic farming in the United States. It also provided a number of recommendations regarding research, education, and public policy, buttressed by case studies of 69 organic farms in 23 states, making concrete the principles underlying organic farming. This USDA report, a landmark in the sustainable agriculture literature, was rejected by the incoming Reagan administration in January 1981. Simultaneously, the Administration abolished the newly established position of Organic Resources Coordinator, held by a member of the USDA Study Team for Organic Farming, Garth Youngberg.

These events signaled clearly that the USDA was not ready to promote more widespread adoption of organic farming methods. An important contributing factor was the infamous statement by former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, that tens of millions of Americans would starve if all farmers adopted organic methods. Even today, most farmers and scientists contend that organic agriculture is not capable of providing adequate food and fiber for the expanding world population. Neill Schaller (personal correspondence) has observed that as a result of this resounding rejection in 1981 by the Reagan Administration, many advocates for organic farming began supporting the term "sustainable agriculture," in the hope that its use could ultimately invite respect for organic agriculture. Youngberg has observed that advocates for organic and other low-chemical approaches to farming did not explicitly link their mode of farming with sustainability until the 1980's, and that sustainability has effectively replaced organic farming as the motive force for development of alternatives to chemical-intensive agriculture. He wrote:

Sustainability, after all, is an enormously powerful symbol. In terms of its emotional and evocative meanings, it probably ranks alongside such concepts as freedom, liberty, and democracy. ... the very thought of an unsustainable agriculture immediately conjures up images of massive human deprivation and suffering, and ultimately, mass starvation. What could be more important than sustainability? It is difficult to imagine a more powerful symbol. (Youngberg, et al., 1993, p.296)

Despite his major set-back, Youngberg has established the most effective and professionally respected organization on the sustainable agriculture scene, now called the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture. The Institute supports an excellent refereed journal (The American Journal of Alternative Agriculture), a policy "think tank," various conferences, and other activities to promote sustainable agriculture.

The third major publication to intensify the debate was the National Academy of Sciences report, Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989). This report contains a summary of the scientific knowledge (circa 1986) under categories such as tillage, biological control of pests, legumes as a source of nitrogen, etc. But the authors wisely recognized that reductionist knowledge of isolated components of a farming system cannot provide a clear understanding of the functioning of ecologically friendly farming systems. Therefore they included (as Part Two) a series of case studies describing in detail the operation of 14 farms across the US. The case studies provided a sense of cohesiveness missing in the disciplinary reviews of scientific knowledge about components or sub-parts of the system.⁽¹⁾ The report soundly disproved the widely held axiom that sustainable agriculture is inherently destined to produce low yields and low incomes.

Certain segments of the scientific community bitterly rejected the National Academy of Sciences report, particularly Part 2 (the case studies). This firestorm of opposition was a harbinger of the scientific community's resistance to the holistic, interdisciplinary research methodologies later advocated by many of the organizers and proponents of the LISA Program. This opposition has subsided somewhat, but remains a barrier to scientific analysis of sustainable whole-farm systems and agriculture's impacts on ecological systems.

Funding for the NAS committee and the staff work leading to publication of this report was provided in part by the Paul O'Connell (then the Deputy Administrator of Cooperative State Research Service in USDA) in anticipation of possible federal funding for what was to become the LISA Program. In fact, when this report was published in 1989, O'Connell submitted it as an important part of that year's annual report to Congress on the LISA Program.

A fourth major historical document was the 1990 General Accounting Office report on "Alternative Agriculture," which articulated the widespread and growing public concern over the increasing dependence of US agriculture on chemicals, and their detrimental effects -- endangering the environment, human health, the economy, and quality of life. Here are a few salient excerpts from that report:

The use of agrichemical in conventional agriculture can endanger human health in two ways. Consumers may be exposed to agrichemical residues on the food they eat and the water they drink, while farmers and farm workers face heavier and more direct contamination from handling agrichemical and working in fields where they have been used ...
One survey of shoppers in early 1989 showed that 82 percent believed that chemical residues posed a "serious hazard" to the health of consumers.⁽²⁾ Agrichemicals also pose an ongoing threat to the safety of surface and groundwater supplies used for drinking. ...
Whether food safety concerns are justified or not, farmers who rely on agrichemicals may face a loss of productivity if these chemicals become unavailable for use or a loss of income if they cannot sell products treated with them. Either way, farmers who have become dependent on these agrichemicals are at economic risk. ...
Agriculture also causes nonfarm damage, since farming is a primary nonpoint source of water pollution.⁽³⁾ The major sources of agricultural pollution are sediment (from soil erosion) and nutrients from fertilizers. ...
Deposited soil obstructs waterways and fills reservoirs; suspended soil chokes water life, depresses recreational use, and increases water purification costs. Increased nutrient levels promote algae growth, which depletes available oxygen; decreased oxygen limits the population of larger plants and animals. ...
The health, environmental, and economic concerns associated with conventional agriculture have led to a growing interest in the development of alternatives that would lower health risks, protect farm resources, reduce adverse environmental effects, and improve long-term farm profitability and competitiveness. Farmers, environmentalists, consumers, and researchers have begun to seek, study, test, adopt, and advocate alternatives to conventional agriculture. ...
Alternative farming methods are also gaining recognition as an important area of scientific inquiry at several universities and agricultural research centers.

(USGAO, 1990, pp.14-23).

The historical importance of this report lies in the credence it imparted to the concerns motivating the establishment of a USDA grants program to support sustainable agriculture research and education, especially the need to make US agriculture safer for humans and the environment, and more productive for future generations.

The primary effort during the 1980s to make U. S. agriculture more sustainable was a competitive grants program in USDA, focusing on improving the scientific, educational and practical foundation of farming systems in harmony with Nature. The competitive grants program called Low-Input Sustainable Agriculture (LISA, predecessor of the SARE Program) was initiated in 1988 under the Food Security Act of 1985.

The importance of the role played by Senator Patrick Leahy and his staff, notably Kathleen Merrigan, in gaining Congressional approval of the enabling legislation and funding for the LISA Program cannot be over-estimated. Schaller has observed that Merrigan "continued to defend and promote the Program throughout the agony of the 1990 farm bill debate." She also participated in meetings during the formative stages of the program, repeatedly emphasizing the intent of Congress, that farmers must be heavily involved in the Program. (personal correspondence)

The primary goal of the LISA Program was to develop and promote widespread adoption of more sustainable farming and ranching systems that will meet the food and fiber needs of the present while enhancing the ability of future generations to meet their needs and promoting quality of life for rural people and all of society. Compared with conventional, chemical-intensive production methods, "more sustainable production systems" significantly reduce or eliminate dependence on synthetic chemical pesticides and other inputs and practices that now endanger farm workers, harm the environment, impair water quality, or utilize resources at a rate faster than they are naturally regenerated or replaced by scientific and technological innovations. More sustainable farming systems include ecologically based management strategies such as modern, biologically intensive and ecologically sensitive versions of integrated pest management (IPM), for example. The LISA Program's approach for attaining this goal was by sponsoring research and education designed to enhance the productivity and profitability of ecologically sound production systems.

Now that the Program (currently called SARE, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) has become well established, the scope of projects has been broadened to include a few socio-economic projects oriented toward the broader social goals of enhancing of the quality of life for farm families, workers, communities, and all of society. The federal appropriation has grown from $3.9 million in 1988 to about $12 million in 1998.

The Rodale Connection

While several influential members of the US Senate and House of Representatives in the 1980's favored sustainable agriculture, the political power necessary to obtain an appropriation for this new initiative did not materialize until a major lobbying effort was mounted. The leading organization in this lobbying effort was Rodale Press, which provided about $50,000 for lobbying by a Washington-based firm, McMahon and Associates (including Sandy Schlecker). Many powerful organizations were recruited to muster grass-roots support for the start of funding to support research and education on sustainable agriculture. This highly effective lobbying effort included bringing knowledgeable witnesses from politically potent districts to Washington for Congressional hearings, among many other activities. The end result of this effort was the first Federal appropriation for sustainable agriculture research and education, $3.9 million, December of 1987 (for fiscal year 1988).

The Rodale Institute played a major role throughout the formative years of the Program. A Rodale grant was used by a Pennsylvania State University professor (this author) to conduct the survey of US organic farmers and to begin preparing the case studies that later enriched the NAS report, Alternative Agriculture. Dick Harwood, then the research director for the Rodale Institute, served as a member of the NAS committee that prepared that report, and I observed his major impact on its quality and effectiveness. The Rodale Institute long-term experiment comparing organic and conventional farming systems, which was primarily the brain-child of Harwood, did much to establish the credibility of sustainable agriculture research. John Haberern, vice president of the Rodale Institute, served on the Program's project selection committees and performed many other essential services to keep the Program moving forward. Meanwhile, Bob Rodale provided the visionary energy and monetary support to enable and direct the many Rodale contributions to this cause. Without the Rodale input, I doubt the LISA program could have been established and maintained.

Initial Policy Statement

Before the Program could get under way, it had to receive official status within the USDA. This status required an official policy statement, signed by the Secretary of Agriculture. As a pragmatic stratagem for gaining approval of this essential document, Paul O'Connell worked behind the scenes with a handful of sympathetic USDA employees, such as Klaus Flach in the Soil Conservation Service and Neill Schaller then in the Economic Research Service, to draft and gain internal approval of an enabling policy statement. This statement was deliberately vague, intended to fly beneath the radar screen of antagonistic USDA officials, who almost certainly would have killed the document. Yet it was strong enough to serve as justification for what we were about to create. With consummate bureaucratic skill and finesse, and with the support of Schaller, Flach, a few other colleagues in USDA, O'Connell deftly side-stepped formal review procedures. He persuaded Assistant Secretary Orville Bentley to initial the document, and got it on the Secretary's desk for signature. This document, presented in the Appendix, became the first official USDA statement indicating the Federal government's support for research and education programs on sustainable agriculture.

In subsequent years the leadership of the LISA Program continued to cite this document as USDA policy -- conveniently ignoring its one-year termination date, January 18, 1989. And even though no subsequent Departmental policy was promulgated for several years, the Program survived and slowly expanded.

1.These case studies were prepared by Patrick Madden, with major input from Edward Schaefer.

2. Survey conducted by the Food Marketing Institute, a supermarket trade group. (Steimel, p. F1.)

3. Nonpoint-source pollution is diffused pollution resulting from water runoff from urban areas, agriculture, and the like; point-source pollution occurs from a pipe or other discrete sources from factories, waste water treatment plants, or confined animal feedlots.