Nutrition for Optimal Health Association, Inc.

John Bell Clark, PhD

Armed with an interdisciplinary science doctorate, life-long ecological observations, farming in his blood, ten years of entrepreneurial tenure, a date of birth preceding the modern "pesticide revolution" by 15 years, a mortgage-leveraged farm purchased in the mid-70s, and no visible agency guidance in sustainable agriculture, he set off in 1976 at age 39 to try his hand at family farming. He eschewed pesticides from day one. All the "experts" forecast failure.

Since he was confidant as a biochemist that very soon pesticides would migrate to the aquifers just as they would through a chromatographic column in the laboratory, and since he also surmised that foreign (to nature) molecules from "crop protection" chemicals would very certainly be toxic to at least a few of the thousands of metabolic pathways making up the food chain and providing ecological balances, he saw no alternative but to proceed as if his farming career would be an ongoing experiment, mixing modern equipment and genetics with the good farming practices he had watched his grandfather and father use.

Thus began Roseland Farms, pesticide-free since 1978 on 645 acres (and additionally on 1,155 acres since 1980) in southwestern Michigan, 20 miles northeast of South Bend, Indiana. Roseland Farms began a direct marketing program (primarily beef) to stores in 1985. Environmental Illness (EI) victims have found his products to be completely clean, and this "test market" is a far more sensitive assay for pesticide residues than any chemical analysis currently available.