Alternative Energy Resources Organization (AERO)
Roberta Knapp, Executive Director
432 N. Last Chance Gulch
Helena, Mont. 59601
(406) 443-7272
Fax: (406) 442-9120
email: aero@aeromt.org

A lot of grass-roots organizations talk about sustainable agriculture. A few DO something about it. AERO's Farm Improvement Clubs model is one of the best, and it's an exportable model.

Here's how it works: Using money from grants and donations, with seed money from the Northwest Area Foundation, AERO offers small grants of up to $800 to encourage farmers to form groups of five or more families to form "clubs" which take on significant sustainable-agriculture projects as demonstrations. The money covers costs such as seeds or feed, Reichert said; one club even bought a llama for natural weed control! By requiring the farmers to work in groups, the project builds community, and it gives farmers a reason to talk with each other about farming techniques and economy, a communication that, unfortunately, is rare in western farm culture.

It's not just talk. In three or four years of operation, more than 20 farm clubs have been formed all over Western Montana, involving 175 farm families in projects as varied as pesticide-free range management, grain projects for wheat farmers, small-scale farms for specialty crops, a garlic and herb-growing project, and three community-supported agriculture (CSA) projects in which non-farmers purchase shares of produce as futures, their investment financing a small farmer's crop. AERO provides technical advice, and at the end of the growing season, the farmers hold open house to show off their results.

The project has been such a success that it has already inspired replication efforts. The Montana State Department of Natural Resources and Conservation is using the model to set up clubs elsewhere in Montana, and the Kellogg Foundation has given AERO a grant to replicate the program in Idaho and Western Washington.

AERO itself began in 1984, a spinoff of the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC), the Billings-based umbrella for Northern Plains small-farm organizing groups. AERO differs from the statewide resource councils, Reichert said, in that it actively promotes new directions in sustainable agriculture, resource management and energy conservation, while they tend to work legislatively and react to issues.

In addition to its efforts with farm-improvement clubs, AERO serves as a major clearinghouse of information about energy conservation, solar power and related issues, with a comprehensive library available to their members as well as providing technical information in response to telephoned requests.

AERO is also in the process of organizing a Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SAWG) for the western states, the last major region of the U.S. not incorporated in such a group; they're using the SAWG based at the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Neb., as their model. Kurki, the director, is also working closely with Walthill in an effort to replicate its Land-Link program to encourage and train young farmers in Montana. And the group is coordinating the Montana Transportation Project, a community-organizing effort to encourage public participation in a state public-transportation planning process already under way. And at some point, they would like to fund a model "community based conservation project" in which an entire small town would undergo a comprehensive energy audit leading to a complete energy-conservation revamping for every home and business. Their model: The town of Osage, Iowa, which did just that, under City Hall's guidance, for every residence and business.

With a staff of just 3 1/2 and office space in a former hospital building just up the hill from Last Chance Gulch, Helena's quaintly named main street, AERO gets along on a lean $250,000 budget, much of which goes for contract research.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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