Local Leadership
The Western SARE Program was initiated in 1985 and administered by the University of California through its Oakland administrative offices, with Dr. David Schlegel as the coordinator. In December 1994, the administration of the program was moved to Utah State University, with Dr. Phil Rasmussen as coordinator. Western SARE's Professional Development Program (PDP) was initiated in 1995 as a subcontract with the University of California-Davis and the National Center for Appropriate Technology, or NCAT, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Montana. The PDP subcontract is now administered by the University of Wyoming (Jim Freeburn) and NCAT (Al Kurki).
SARE and its grants are managed through four U.S. regions - Western, Northeast, Southern and North Central. Each region is governed by an Administrative Council, similar to a board of directors, comprising diverse local members including farmers and ranchers as well as representatives from universities, nonprofit, government and agribusiness organizations. This decentralized structure allows each Administrative Council to respond to the needs and challenges distinctive to that region's agriculture.
The Western region has a vast diversity of agriculture and a broad geographic range that encompasses 13 states and four Pacific island protectorates: Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Micronesia, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Funded projects range from the study of cover crops in California's irrigated deserts to finding suitable pasture species for western Oregon's rainy winters; from dryland cropping systems in the high plains of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana to finding cropping alternatives to sugar cane and pineapple in tropical Hawaii.
Because Administrative Council members live throughout the region and are immersed in a variety of agricultural endeavors themselves, they are well qualified to disburse Western SARE grant dollars to projects like these that can foster improved and sustainable agricultural practices.
