Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT)
The purpose of OSALT is to develop a sustainable agriculture.
Develop: conduct research and testing focused on the development of sustainable agricultural practices. Disseminate broadly the results of this research and testing through educational activities.
Research: Through a combination of review of current knowledge, grower experiences and analytical thinking, design and conduct field trials to build a body of knowledge and practices that bring us closer to a sustainable agriculture.
Field trials: at each OSALT site the growers will conduct, as an integral part of their operation, field trials of practices designed to be more sustainable.
Educational activities: publications, classes, workshops and presentations.
Sustainable: Ecologically sound, economically practical and socially equitable.
Ecologically sound: natural systems are an intersection of dynamically balanced relationships of living and non-living things (The Circle of Life). Ecologically sound practices are those that can be repeated over and over without exceeding the capacity of the system to return to balance.
Economically practical: sustainable practices are economically practical when they support the maintenance of the “household” over time.
Socially equitable: Sustainable systems do not serve one sector of the society at the expense (in life, health, effort, dignity) of other sectors.
Agriculture: human beings’ 12,000 year old effort to influence what grows were, and when.
Early History
