This closely followed the Mid-Term Update of the national plan which was published in April 1996. The Southern Association believes that there should be an obvious continuity between national and regional strategies, although it clearly recognizes the principle that research tends to be relatively site-specific. Thus, a major segment of the Southern Strategic Research Plan builds on the national plan and uses it as a template to interpret the Southern agenda relative to the broadly stated national initiatives. In addition, the association has identified a number of research opportunities which it recognizes as being more specific to the Southern agenda and upon which various activities of the Southern Association may likely be built. The details of the methods for developing and using the Southern Strategic Research Plan are contained in Appendix 1.
Directors bring a rich input from individual state customers to planning workshops.
The Southern Association membership is organized into planning groups to address each of the six major program areas of the national and regional plan. The chairs of the six planning work groups make up the Southern Association's planning subcommittee. With assistance from the USDA, all projects in each of the states of Southern Region states were classified relative to their contribution to sustainable agriculture. This provided a credible assessment of the current portfolio that addresses the sustainable agriculture agenda, as it is perceived by its major proponents. This will serve as a basis for more definitive planning to address an agenda that will look past the SARE program and address the broader set of issues that are relevant to improving the use of natural resources for production of food and fiber using systems approaches that are environmentally sound and socially acceptable.