The Sustainable Agriculture Resource Consortium (SARC) was founded in the Fall of 2000. It was conceived as a student project under the supervision of College of Agriculture faculty and closely tied to the improvement of the organic Student Experimental Farm, now part of the Cal Poly Organic Farm. To date, a major portion of the SARC initiative has been dedicated to strengthening Cal Poly’s offerings and infrastructure for certified organic agriculture. The Organic Farm has been the home to many SARC projects. However, it is the SARC’s intention to encompass a broad vision of sustainability that includes but goes beyond certified organic agriculture.
During the preliminary development of the SARC concept in the Spring of 2000, Soil Science graduate student Hunter Francis worked with College of Agriculture faculty to initiate Cal Poly’s first course exclusively dedicated to Organic Agriculture (AG 315). This course is now approved for General Education credit and is offered on an annual basis each spring. The course has hosted many of California’s leading professionals involved in organic agriculture.
In the summer of 2000, College of Agriculture student, Terry Hooker, initiated Cal Poly’s first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. The CSA is now providing local families with fresh organic produce on a weekly basis all year round. The first major improvement to the Student Experimental Farm site was the construction of a multi-purpose strawbale building, the senior project of City and Regional Planning senior, Alison Pernell, who won the 2000 Distinguished Leadership Award for a Student Planner from the American Planning Association for her work on this building. Both of these projects have set the tone for subsequent projects in terms of their generation of opportunities for students, broad community involvement and interdisciplinary approaches to engage people in the agro-ecological landscape. Since that time, thousands of students, faculty and community members have made use of the farm for a multitude of formal and informal educational activities.
In 2002, the SARC made several important advances in terms of organization and recognition. Providing an important step in leadership, Dr. Neal MacDougall of the Agribusiness Department became acting Faculty Director for the SARC. Also in that year, the SARC completed its first business plan and received generous seed-funding from the Dean of the College of Agriculture, David Wehner. In 2006, the SARC assembled its first advisory board, comprised of many leading figures from California's organic/sustainable food system. |
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