In these areas, smaller districts, smaller schools, and smaller class sizes are important factors in academic performance, as measured by proficiency tests. New research for the Rural School and Community Trust has been carried out by Craig Howley of Ohio University and Appalachia Educational Laboratory and Robert Bickel of Marshall University. The National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs, established in 1997 by the Frontier Natural Products Cooperative, is a 68-acre research and educational facility and botanical preserve located near Rutland in Meigs County, Ohio. The Center's mission is to ensure the survival in the wild of our native medicinal herbs by developing methods of organic cultivation for plants that are currently wild harvested. Increasing demand for medicinal herbs, and lack of information about their cultivation, has put tremendous pressure on their wild populations.
Herbs valued for their roots are especially vulnerable, because the entire plant is harvested.
If cultivation methods can be developed, there is the potential to meet demand while developing a new income source for rural landowners. Rural Action has been an active partner of the National Center from the beginning, recruiting volunteers for research plantings, educating herb growers about the work, and providing opportunities for Center staff to meet with potential growers. In June 2000, Rural Action's annual Landowner's Conference was hosted by the Center. Since then, our relationship has entered a new and very exciting phase. On July 1,2000, Rural Action entered into an agreement with Frontier Natural Products Cooperative to transfer management and ownership of the National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs to Rural Action.