About Us
Context
"Though people have not progressed beyond the need to eat food and drink water and wear clothes and live in houses, most people have progressed beyond the domestic arts - the husbandry and wifery of the world - by which those needful things are produced and conserved. In fact, the comparative few who still practice that necessary husbandry and wifery often are inclined to apologize for doing so, having been carefully taught in our education system that those arts are degrading and unworthy of people's talents.
"Educated minds, in the modern era, are unlikely to know anything about food and drink, clothing and shelter. In merely taking these things for granted, the modern educated mind reveals itself also to be as superstitious a mind as ever has existed in the world. What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food? ...Most people appear to assume that when they have paid their money for these things they have entirely met their obligations.
"Money does not bring forth food. Neither does the technology of the food system. Food comes from nature and from the work of people." - Wendell Berry in "Orion" magazine, summer 1999.
"Many cultures are based on agriculture. All civilizations are based on agriculture. Without sustainable agriculture there can be no sustainable civilization. We can do without a sustainable agriculture in exactly the same way we can do without a sustainable civilization, but most of us don't like the alternatives." - Will Newman II, co-founder of OSALT
OSALT holds urban and rural agricultural lands in trust, keeping them in agricultural use by successive generations of growers and stewards, and serves to restore an appreciation of agriculture and to actively participate in developing sustainable agricultural practices and systems through research and education.
