Minutes from April 8

April 8, 2005
COSA conference call

Walter Goldstein, Julie Dawson, Cheryl Baker, Victoria Bhavsar, Kim Leval, Heather Darby

Announcements – none

Annual meeting funding and logistics
Karl and Kim have applied to ASA for funding of the roundtable in Salt Lake. The Western SARE PDP coordinator, Phil Rasmussen, was very supportive and offered help. He will check with Senator Bennett’s office to see if anyone from that office can attend the roundtable.

The roundtable will occur immediately before the Sperling Lecture (November 7, 4-7). Topics are in the minutes from our March conference call.

All discussion groups will be charged with brainstorming ideas for symposia proposals or organized sessions for 2006. COSA members will take those ideas and work them up.

Topic updates:
Farming systems – Still trying to contact Laurie Drinkwater.
Policy – Senator Bennett’s office is being contacted.
Education – On the agenda.
Science in NOSB – Kim will talk to Alex to see what’s going on.

Other Events and Contacts
On-farm breeding projects workshop – November 10 sponsored by
Marcello Carena marcello.carena@ndsu.nodak.edu
Molly John mmj9@cornell.edu

Website content
Kim and Victoria will think about this and circulate draft text.

Flyer for sustainable agriculture
The idea is to identify events and symposia that people can go to during the meeting, as a “map” to highlighted events. This would be included in the registration packet. Karl will be requested to look into the logistics of this.
Next year, we may ask people to check a box in their title-summary form to be included in the COSA flyer. COSA should not get into the position of evaluating people’s talks for sustainability focus.

In the future – have a graduate student talk and poster competition for sustainable agriculture. CSARE has some infrastructure left over from the 7th generation award.