As Rodale Institute’s first CEO, Tim LaSalle champions his science-based hope for a regenerative food system that will mitigate climate change and prevent famine. He has challenged audiences around the world, including Al Gore's Generation Management Investment, United Nations Environment Program, and the National Wildlife Federation. He is also a frequent contributor to Huffington Post and Treehugger.


Tim LaSalle grew up on a dairy farm and worked his way through college milking his cows. This milk money also allowed him to obtain a master's degree in genetics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. LaSalle applied his knowledge of dairy and genetics as a professor at California Polytechnic State University in addition to starting and operating a conventional dairy farm. While teaching at Cal Poly, LaSalle became involved with the California Agriculture Education Foundation. As a professor in the program and ultimately the president and CEO of the Foundation, he arranged educational leadership programs in more than 80 countries with heads of state, as well as ministers of environment and agriculture. What LaSalle experienced during his international travel and engagement with exemplary leaders led him to challenge the conventional agriculture mindset he'd grown up with, worked with and taught.

He saw the need for new systems to regenerate devastated natural ecosystems. As part of that quest, he has provided transformational leadership at the Environmental Center in San Luis Obispo, the Savory Center for Holistic Management, and Northwest Earth Institute. He went back to school and earned a doctorate studying the deep psychological roots of human participation in environmental destruction, and how individuals can awake to the task of repairing the planet.

Blog Entries by Timothy LaSalle

Time For Climate Change Action: If We Lead, Our Leaders Will Follow

Posted November 11, 2009 | 05:58 PM (EST)


Next month's United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has much of the world poised for life-sustaining forward motion in our response to climate crisis. The world's people are crying out for a more constructive start to climate crisis response.

The goal of this convention is to bring together...

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Dead Zones, Fertilizer and Personal Responsibility

3 Comments | Posted October 29, 2009 | 06:11 PM (EST)


By Timothy LaSalle

I come from a very "conventional" agricultural background. My family grew peaches, walnuts, cotton and raised Holstein heifers in the Central Valley of California. I would eventually have my own conventional dry-lot dairy farm on the central coast of California. We did what was considered modern at...

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New Big Ag Push to Fight World Hunger Misses What Organic Ag Is Already Doing

4 Comments | Posted September 22, 2009 | 03:45 PM (EST)


The compelling humanitarian goals expressed today at the corporately sponsored Global Harvest Initiative symposium were laudable, as were some of the hunger-relief projects cited. Missing, however, was an honest assessment of the limits of dead-end chemical agriculture to play a leading role in actually feeding people.

Also absent...

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Thirsting for Truth: No "Safe" Level of Atrazine

4 Comments | Posted August 31, 2009 | 12:54 PM (EST)


Last week's New York Times article "Debating Just How Much Atrazine Is Safe In Your Water Glass" highlights the controversy surrounding the agri-chemical weed killer atrazine in our water supply. It's past time to acknowledge that the legal pollution in our water has unacceptable human consequences.

The increase in...

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Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at its Own Game

7 Comments | Posted August 17, 2009 | 06:42 PM (EST)


Organic agriculture's recently recognized benefits for improving food security don't depend on a boost from genetically modified (GM) technology. While the chemically-based systems that GM requires could be cleaned up with organic techniques, there's no clear reason to degrade organic standards to accept the downsides that come...

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Organic Food Is All That, and More. Just Eat It.

27 Comments | Posted July 30, 2009 | 04:26 PM (EST)


Good news! You can rest assured that the organic food you bought today is every bit as beneficial for you and the planet as it was three days ago. Advantages for health and ecological soundness are still there, despite a review released this week claiming that there is insufficient evidence...

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