The Scientific & Agricultural Council.

Purpose

The Scientific & Agricultural Council (SAC) is not a rubber-stamp body. It is a working advisory group with one primary function: to ensure that Pristine America's research methodology, data publication practices, and public claims meet the standard of intellectual honesty that the organization has committed to.

SAC members are not employees. They are not officers of the organization. They do not endorse the hypothesis that our process will produce positive results. They endorse the proposition that the question is worth testing correctly.

“We do not need advisors who believe we will succeed. We need advisors who will tell us if we are measuring badly.”

What SAC Members Do

• §Review Phase 1 protocol before applications begin
• §Advise on sampling methodology, lab selection, and control design
• §Provide independent commentary on results after publication
• §Flag methodological concerns in writing, which are published alongside results
• §Advise on claim discipline in public communications
• §Meet quarterly during active research phases

SAC membership is voluntary. Compensation policy is disclosed in the parcel access agreement and advisory agreement. (Compensation/stipend structure per legal counsel review — TBD.)

Recruitment Criteria

Pristine America selects SAC members on three criteria: domain credibility, value-alignment, and intellectual courage.

Domain credibility

Demonstrated expertise in a relevant field — through peer-reviewed publication, field practice, institutional leadership, or documented practical achievement. A PhD is one path to domain credibility. A farmer with 40 years of documented soil improvement is another. Neither automatically outranks the other.

Value-alignment

Commitment to four specific values:

• §Truth as the primary loyalty — the advisor will report inconvenient findings, not suppress them
• §Measurement as the language of proof — the advisor will not accept "trust me" in place of data
• §Farmer respect — the advisor will not participate in frameworks that treat farmers as passive recipients of expert instruction
• §Intellectual courage — the advisor will publicly state conclusions that contradict institutional consensus when the evidence supports doing so and the evidence is solid

Intellectual courage

Willingness to be publicly named on findings that may be contested, and willingness to correct positions when data requires it.

Who We Are Seeking

Pristine America is actively recruiting SAC members in the following disciplines:

• §Soil science and soil biology
• §Arid and semi-arid land ecology
• §Agronomy and dryland farming systems
• §Hydrology and water resource management
• §Soil and food lab methodology
• §Independent regulatory and claims review
• §Agricultural economics

Current SAC composition: Members will be announced as confirmed. We do not list placeholders or provisional names. When an advisor is confirmed, their name, institutional affiliation, and area of focus will appear on this page.

Advisor Independence

SAC members advise Pristine America. They do not speak for it. Advisory commentary and any dissenting opinions on methodology or results will be published alongside lab reports, attributed to the member by name and affiliation. Members who disagree with Pristine America's interpretation of results will be given equivalent publication space.

If an SAC member concludes that our methodology is flawed, that finding will be published. We are not running a council that protects us from criticism. We are running a council that generates it usefully.

How to Apply

If you meet the domain credibility criteria above and are interested in contributing to the SAC, contact advisors@pristineamerica.org with a brief description of your relevant background and the specific dimension of Phase 1 methodology you believe you can improve.