Conference Proceedings:Higher Education and Research for ... · in the 21st Century. 1 GCHERA - 2001 Proceedings July 12-14, 2001 San Francisco, California USA Conference Proceedings:

July 12-14, 2001

San Francisco, California, USA

July 12-14, 2001

San Francisco, California, USA

Global Consortium of Higher Educationand Research for Agriculture

Global Consortium of Higher Educationand Research for Agriculture

Conference Proceedings: Higher Education and Researchfor Agriculture and Food Systemsin the 21st Century

Conference Proceedings: Higher Education and Researchfor Agriculture and Food Systemsin the 21st Century

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GCHERA - 2001 Proceedings

July 12-14, 2001

San Francisco, California

USA

Conference Proceedings: Higher Education and Researchfor Agriculture and Food Systems

in the 21st Century

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Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture(GCHERA)

Higher Education and Research for Agriculture andFood Systems in the 21st Century

July 12-14, 2001

Conference Themes

New Science in a New Century: Agricultural Research, Life Sciences, and Information Technology

The Changing Nature of Food Systems and the University Response

Agricultural Curricula for the 21st Century

Organizing the University of the Future

Additional copies are available for U.S. $10.00 by contacting:

SecretariatGlobal Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture

International Programs in Agriculture1168 Agricultural Administration Bldg., Room 26School of AgriculturePurdue UniversityWest Lafayette, Indiana 47907-1168USA

E-mail: [email protected]: 765-494-6876FAX: 765-494-9613

©Copyright 2001, Purdue University

ISBN-0-931682-89-4

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Acknowledgements

The Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture isindebted to the following sponsors who supported the conference, including the publica-

tion and distribution of this book to academic leaders throughout the world.

Dow AgroSciencesIndianapolis, Indiana, USA

Farm FoundationOak Brook, Illinois, USA

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsRome, Italy

Iowa State UniversityAmes, Iowa, USA

John Deere FoundationMoline, Illinois, USA

Pioneer Hi-Bred International and DupontDes Moines, Iowa, USA

Purdue UniversityWest Lafayette, Indiana, USA

United States Agency for International DevelopmentWashington, D.C., USA

United States Department of Agriculture, Cooperative States Research,Education and Extension Service

Washington, D.C., USA

University of California, DavisDavis, California, USA

W. K. Kellogg FoundationBattle Creek, Michigan, USA

We would like to thank the presenters, discussants, session chairs, workshop leaders, and poster authors fortheir significant contributions to the success of the conference. Their names appear in Appendices I, II, III, and VII.In addition, we thank the Executive Committee who continue to invest time and energy into the success of GCHERA.Their names are listed in Appendix VI. We are grateful to the attendees of the conference who invested considerabletime and money to attend and participate in the conference. Their names are listed in Appendix IV.

The Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture thanks the many individuals who workedto make the conference and this book successful, including: Lowell Hardin, Sally Ashlock, Janet Schwanke, and DavidSammons, International Programs in Agriculture, Purdue, (for planning, administrative support, and communication);Ruth Ann Bowles and Sherry Swank, Printing Services, Purdue, (for registration material production); J. Brandon Ray,Printing Services, Purdue, (for registration packet design); David Acker, Global Agriculture Programs, Iowa StateUniversity, (for fund raising, financial oversight, and administrative support); Deb Schmidt, Iowa State University,(for database management); Steve Cain, Beth Forbes, Agricultural Communication, Purdue, (for media coverage);Jane Wolf Brown, Agricultural Communication, Purdue, (for Proceedings managing editor); Carol Bloom, Bloom Inc.,Lafayette, Indiana, (for copy editor); Marian Sipes, Agricultural Communication, Purdue, (for transcription); RussMerzdorf, Agricultural Communication, Purdue, (for Proceedings illustration and design); Haywood Publishing,Lafayette, Indiana, (for printing GCHERA cover); Printing Services, Purdue, (for printing GCHERA Proceedingscontent); and Vivian Scott, Purdue, (accounting).

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Table of Contents

Foreward 9

Martin C. Jischke, President

Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture

President, Purdue UniversityWest Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Chapter 1 11

The Mission at Hand: Food Security and Environmental Integrity

Martin C. Jischke, President Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture

President, Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Chapter 2 13

California Agriculture, U.S. Higher Education, and the Global Food System

William B. Lacy, Vice Provost

University Outreach and International Programs

University of California, Davis Davis, California, USA

Chapter 3 17

Opening Keynote Address — Globalization and the Contemporary UniversityM. Peter McPherson, President

Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Chapter 4 23

Bringing Change and New Science to the Developing World

Paul Ming-Hsien Sun, Vice Chair of Board

Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center Tainan, Taiwan

Chapter 5 29

Interdisciplinary Research in Agriculture for Better Food and NutritionRoger N. Beachy, President

Danforth Plant Science Center St. Louis, Missouri, USA

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Chapter 6 35

Integrating Food Systems in the New Global EconomyElaine R. Wedral, President

Nestlé Research and Development Centers, Inc. New Milford, Connecticut, USA

Chapter 7 39

A University Action Plan for Servicing the World’s Changing Food SystemsRobert L. Thompson, Director

Rural Development Department The World Bank Washington, D.C., USA

Chapter 8 45

Revising India’s Agricultural CurriculumS. Kannaiyan, Vice Chancellor

Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Chapter 9 55

Meeting the Challenges, Making the ChangesMaris O’Rourke, Former Secretary for Education and Chief Executive of the Ministry of Education

New Zealand Ministry of Education Auckland, New Zealand

Chapter 10 61

African Universities Today and the University of the FutureMabel Imbuga, Dean, Faculty of Science

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology Nairobi, Kenya

Chapter 11 67

Stimulating Local Communities through Global CollaborationRichard M. Foster, Vice President for Programs

W.K. Kellogg Foundation Battle Creek, Michigan, USA

Chapter 12 73

Time Has Come for the Consortium to Move ForwardDr. Martin C. Jischke, President

Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture President, Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

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Chapter 13 75

Future Perspectives for Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture

Dmytro Melnychuk, President-Elect Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture

Rector, National Agricultural University Kiev, Ukraine

Appendices

Appendix I 79

Conference Program

Appendix II 83

Workshops

Appendix III 85

Poster Session

Appendix IV 87

Participants

Appendix V 97

Executive Committee Report

Appendix VI 99

Executive Committee Members

Appendix VII 101

Speaker Biographies

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Foreward

Dear Conference Participants and Consortium Members:

I am pleased to present you with a copy of the “Proceedings” of the 2001 conference ofthe Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture (GCHERA),which met in San Francisco July 12-14, 2001. Those of you who attended know what anextraordinary event it was and will enjoy reading this document to recapture parts of thatmeeting. Others with an interest in global agriculture, higher education, and research willfind essential elements of this event collected in the pages that follow. I commend this toyou as an important book documenting this major international conference.

The 2001 conference, which followed the founding global conference in Amsterdam in1999, attracted over 200 educators and research scientists from 50 countries around theworld. Representatives from agricultural institutions on every populated continent onEarth were present, reflecting the health and vitality of GCHERA, an organization thathas now grown to nearly 400 members from more than 130 countries. If you are notalready a member of GCHERA, I encourage you to join us in our most important work.

The conference participants heard from prominent leaders on a variety of subjectsaddressing the conference theme: “Higher Education and Research for Agriculture andFood Systems in the 21st Century.” The presenters were grouped under four major sub-themes: New Science in a New Century; The Changing Nature of Food Systems and theUniversity Response; Agricultural Curricula for the 21st Century; Organizing theUniversity of the Future. The papers included in this book record the presentations ofthese speakers grouped under each sub-theme. In addition, the papers include my openingcomments and summary remarks as well as the vision for the future of GCHERApresented by our new President, Rector Dmytro Melnychuk of the National AgriculturalUniversity of Ukraine. In addition, the conference was enriched by a poster session and aseries of workshops, which are detailed in the “Proceedings.”

As the motto on the conference registration packet stated, the purpose of this conferencewas to “Bring the World Agricultural Higher Education and Research CommunityTogether to Meet Global Challenges.” We have made important strides forward but westill have much to do. I invite you to join us.

Martin C. Jischke

Past President, Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture President, Purdue University

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Chapter 1 - The President’s Welcome

The Mission at Hand:Food Security and Environmental Integrity

Martin C. Jischke

President, Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture

President, Purdue University

Indiana, USA

What truly exciting times in agriculture! Today’sscience and technology have never equipped human-kind better for improving lives the world over. Yet, weface enormous challenges in agriculture and in agri-cultural education in this new century.

We must explore ways to feed a growing worldpopulation and simultaneously reduce the environ-mental impact of food production. We believe foodsecurity and environmental integrity must go hand inhand, and we must address them globally with allstakeholders participating, each bringing his or herown expertise to the discussion.

That is the mission of the Global Consortium ofHigher Education and Research for Agriculture(GCHERA). This consortium is the result of bringingleaders of the world’s agricultural higher educationand research communities to Amsterdam in 1999.Since that year, we have been hard at work continuingthe progress that began there.

Food Security andEnvironmental Integrity

In this world today, we simply cannot afford toignore the global imperative in all that we do inagriculture. All of us face many of the same issues,particularly those of us from institutions, universities,and research institutes where agriculture is a recog-nized curricular strength and an honored academictradition.

Agriculture is unmistakably changing and ever-globalizing. The science and technology that underlieagriculture are undergoing a revolution, which leadsour institutions to analyze and debate environmentalissues implicit in the food production systemsemployed around the world.

The two critical charges we must accept in meetingthe challenges of feeding the world’s population, whilesimultaneously reducing environmental pollution, areeducating highly qualified professionals and research-ing to develop new understandings and solve impor-tant problems. Applying science and technologywisely is essential to solving the world’s foodproblems.

The Work of GCHERAGCHERA’s executive committee members have

made significant strides during the past two years inexpanding the network of institutions of highereducation and research that comprise our globalconsortium. One of the most important accomplish-ments is the International Higher Education LoanProgram, or I-HELP. This program helps youngprofessionals with interest in food security andenvironmental sustainability gain valuable experi-ences. It also provides them with an opportunity toimprove and strengthen their leadership skills. I-HELPFellows receive a $5,000 loan for support of programexpenses. If Fellows return home and implement someof their new knowledge and skills, GCHERA mayforgive up to 50 percent of each loan. This year theprogram selected and supported 20 Fellows.

Dr. Dmytro Melnychuk will lead GCHERA’s effortsas its new president. Dr. Melnychuk is the rector of theNational Agricultural University in Kiev, Ukraine. Hisleadership and scholarly pursuits make him one of themost qualified people in the world to lead the work ofthis growing organization.

Today, some 388 members from more than 130countries make up this consortium. In attendance atthis 2001 meeting are educators and researchers from50 nations and more than 150 universities, along withrepresentatives from agricultural institutions on everypopulated continent on Earth.

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Chapter 1

The theme of the 2001 conference, “HigherEducation and Research for Agriculture and FoodSystems in the 21st Century,” was organized aroundseveral subthemes:

- New science in a new century;- The changing nature of food systems and the

university response;- Agricultural curricula in the 21st century;- Organizing the university of the future.

Our conference attendees are an extraordinary groupof global leaders in agricultural higher education andresearch. Perhaps nowhere in the world has there beena collection of people more capable of accomplishingour goals of food security and environmental steward-ship. It’s only by working together and sharingproblems, ideas, and information that we will reachour critical goals.

My hope is that each of us, as a result of attendingthis conference, will become a changed person—changed because we will leave with new knowledge,new insights, new understanding, new energy, newcohesiveness, and new connections to meet thesechallenges in agricultural higher education andresearch. My measure of success for the 2001GCHERA conference is what we each accomplishafter the conference. It is up to each one of us. Wetruly can be the builders of a new world.

We are grateful to all the sponsoring organizations,including the Farm Foundation; The Food and Agri-culture Organization of the United Nations; Iowa StateUniversity; the John Deere Foundation; Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Dupont; Purdue University;United States Agency for International Development;United States Department of Agriculture, CooperativeStates Research, Education and Extension Service;University of California, Davis; the W. K. KelloggFoundation; and Dow AgroSciences.

Chapter 2 - The Host’s Welcome

California Agriculture, U.S. Higher Education,and the Global Food System

William B. Lacy

Vice Provost, University of California,

California, USA

How appropriate that the Global Consortium ofHigher Education and Research for Agriculture ismeeting in California. This state’s agriculture isamong the world’s most productive and efficient. Withmore than $27 billion in farm and timber value in1999, California is the top agricultural state in theUnited States, a position it has held for more than fiftyyears.

Agriculture in CaliforniaCalifornia’s moderate, Mediterranean climate, fertile

soil, diverse land resources, and excellent research andeducation system allow year-round production of morethan 250 commodities, ranging from alfalfa hay towine grapes. California farmers and ranchers lead thenation in 77 commodities and produce all the nation’scommercially grown almonds, artichokes, dates, figs,kiwi fruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, pomegran-ates, prunes, raisins, and walnuts. Remarkably, Cali-fornia farmers grow more than 50 percent of thenation’s fruits, nuts, and vegetables. While the state isknown for its array of unique specialty crops, itsleading performers in terms of gross sales are dairyproducts ($4.3 billion), grapes ($2.4 billion), nurseryproducts ($1.8 billion), cattle and calves ($1.2 billion),and lettuce ($1.1 billion) (California Farm BureauFederation [CFBF] 2001).

With 75,000 farms, California has only one third thenumber of farms as the leading state, Texas, but morethan double Texas’s farmgate and timber value.Contrary to popular opinion, not all farms in Califor-nia are megafarms, although it does have some of thevery largest in the world. However, the average farmsize is 374 acres, about 50 acres below the nationalaverage. Indeed, 88 percent of all farms in Californiahave fewer than 500 acres, and 60 percent have fewerthan 50 acres. This relatively small number of diversefarms is estimated to create 1.4 million jobs (CFBF2001).

Farm MarketsBecause of its proximity to important markets in the

Pacific Rim and its reputation as a supplier of high-quality food, fiber, and forest products, California hasalso become the nation’s number-one farm exportstate. California exports about 20 percent of its totalagricultural production with almonds, cotton, wine,oranges, and milk its top exported commodities.Japan, Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong, and theUnited Kingdom are the top export markets, totalingmore than $3 billion in 1998 (CFBF 2001).

Water SuppliesWater is critical to California’s agricultural success

and survival with more than eight million acres inirrigated acreage. Research has enabled farmers tostretch water supplies by using progressive watermanagement programs and the most advanced irriga-tion technology, i.e., lasers to level farmland, comput-erized irrigation management, soil testing, and anarray of irrigation systems and equipment. In 1995,while increasing production by 67 percent, Californiafarmers used slightly less water than they did in 1967(CFBF 2001).

Farm Crisis on the Horizon?A dark side to this picture, unfortunately, exists as

well. Much of California’s agricultural success hasbeen built on capital-, energy-, and research-intensive,irrigated monocultures that global markets increas-ingly influence. This year the California Farm BureauFederation formed a Farm Crisis Task Force to addresssuch areas of concern as taxes, energy, water, environ-mental regulations, retail concentration, internationaltrade, agricultural chemicals, labor, and public aware-ness. A University of California, Davis (UC Davis)professor Steve Blank (1998) pointed out that, whilehighly productive, California continues to slowlyshrink, with farm acreage down four percent from

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Chapter 2

1992 to 1997 and 3,500 fewer farms during the sameperiod (U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA]1999).

For an increasing number of commodities in Califor-nia and the United States, profits are squeezed becausecosts, which are local, increase and market prices,which are global, are relatively stable or trendingdown in real terms (Blank 1998). The price trends aredue to increases in total supplies made possible in partby research and technological developments andinternational trade agreements, i.e., General Agree-ment on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Between1990 and 2000, the USDA’s index of average pricesreceived by farmers in the United States decreasedseven percent (National Agricultural Statistics Service[NASS] 2000). At the same time, local input costs arerising across the nation and, in particular, in Califor-nia. For example, California’s average value per acreof farm real estate has increased steadily since themid-1980s, reaching $2,610 per acre in 1998 com-pared to $593 per acre in Texas (NASS 1999). Laborcosts are also rising with total wage rates paid byfarmers increasing 40 percent from 1990 to 2000(Economic Research Service [ERS] 2000).

Efforts to improve the profit margin for variouscommodities have addressed both prices and costs.Most efforts to improve prices have not been success-ful so most farmers have turned to costs. Here, themost successful strategies include reducing cost perunit by (1) increasing the size of operations and (2)introducing new technologies. Both have helped slowthe cost squeeze but not reverse it.

Blank (2000) noted that U.S. farmers have beensqueezed out of one commodity after another, movingup through what he calls the four general categories ofthe farming food chain. Low-revenue annual crops,including many field crops, such as wheat and corn,are replaced by higher revenue crops such as low-value perennials (i.e., alfalfa), then by high-valueannuals (fruits and vegetables), and finally by high-value perennials (tree and vine crops). For example,between 1992 and 1997 in California, despite thedecrease in total farming acreage, acres in vegetablesincreased from 1,016,744 to 1,209,259 and acres intree and vine crops increased from 2,245,781 to2,582,084 (USDA 1997). However, each of thesemoves required more money per acre, and thoseinvestments were less flexible, resulting in higherrisks. While these shifts have resulted in increasedrevenues, profit margins have not increased nor are

they expected to as global competition increases. Forthe past 30 years, agriculture’s gross profit margin hasbeen two to three percent (ERS 2000). The challengesare diverse and formidable. However, research andeducation from our institutions of higher educationboth in this country and around the world must be atthe center of any strategies for dealing with this widerange of issues facing our food system, environmentalsustainability, and rural community viability.

U.S. Higher EducationIt is equally appropriate that Purdue University with

cooperation from UC Davis and Iowa State Universityhas provided leadership for a conference of thisconsortium whose mission remains fostering globalcooperation for the improvement of higher educationand research for agriculture. The generation anddissemination of knowledge are critical componentsfor solving the food security and environmentalproblems confronting our world. These three institu-tions, along with other key land-grant universities, areamong the finest public educational institutions in thecountry. They are also part of the best public highereducation systems in the United States—the Univer-sity of California, the Big Ten Conference, and the BigTwelve Conference. These same institutions havestrong and leading agricultural colleges, whichcontinue to play prominent roles toward their reputa-tions for excellence in research and education. In therecent rankings by U.S. News and World Report(U.S. News Online 2000) of the top national publicuniversities, all three were among the top 40 cam-puses: UC Davis (10), Purdue University (20), andIowa State (38). In addition, six out of the top 15national public universities were University of Califor-nia campuses, while eight of the top 25 were Big Teninstitutions, and five of the top 50 were in the BigTwelve Conference.

In agriculture, the dominance is even greater. In arecent study by the publishers of the Science CitationIndex (Dateline 1998) agricultural science paperspublished by UC Davis researchers were referenced inother scientific journal articles more often than papersfrom any other research institution in the nation.Seven Big Ten institutions, Cornell University, andIowa State University, completed the list of thenation’s ten most cited research institutions in agricul-tural sciences. Much of this leadership and excellencehas been built on strong international research collabo-ration and education. The future will depend evenmore critically on fostering global cooperation for theimprovement of higher education and research foragriculture.

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It is also important and appropriate that this interna-tional global conference is meeting here in California,one of the most diverse and globally oriented states inpopulation and cultures, and that UC Davis, one of themost diverse campuses in the country, serves ascohost. One in four Californians are foreign born, andit is estimated that by 2005 that ratio will increase toone in three. A look at the diversity of K-12 students inCalifornia shows 40 percent are Hispanic, another 40percent are white, 11 percent are Asian Pacific Island-ers, and slightly less than 9 percent are AfricanAmericans. At UC Davis, I am fond of saying to ourmore than 1,000 international students who arrive oncampus each year that everyone should feel at homebecause everyone is a minority. A little more than 40percent of our student body is of European descent,approximately one third is of Asian descent, androughly, 10 percent is of Latino descent. Diversity ofperspective, values, and experience will be increas-ingly important in the generation, dissemination, andapplication of knowledge for our global food system.

Global Food System GoalsIn conclusion, the agenda for higher education and

research for food and agriculture must be broad basedand diverse, and we must address multiple goals thatmay appear contradictory, but which we must ap-proach as complementary. Specifically, I refer to thecomplementary goals of food security, environmentalsustainability, empowered and just communities,poverty alleviation, and democratized science. Achiev-ing all simultaneously cannot be taken for granted,particularly in the short term. For example, as hun-dreds of millions of people try to eke out an adequatefood supply from already depleted soils, degradedhillsides, tropical rain forests, and dry areas threatenedby desertification, their efforts further harm theenvironment, thereby worsening their poverty. Whileopportunities for progress on these goals dependconsiderably on specific social, economic, and agro-ecological circumstances, much more remains for usto learn about how these critical and interrelated goalsare linked and the factors that condition these relation-ships (Lacy, Lacy, and Hansen, in press). Indeed,Richard Manning (2000) documented, throughaccounts in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, India,China, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, that improve-ments in the food, environment, and poverty triangleseem most likely to come from the developing world,when alternative methods and philosophies, based onindigenous knowledge and native crops, as well ascutting-edge technology, are all considered.

Ultimately these goals are inextricably linked, andsuccessful pursuit of them will require the best ourinstitutions of higher education have to offer, coupledwith actions by other related institutions and appropri-ate government policies. Finally, this agenda mustinvolve aggressive and creative global collaborativeefforts at the same time that action is grounded in thecommunity. Communities continue to be the basicbuilding blocks and foundations of our society,making critical contributions to the quality of foodsystems, environment, education, health, economy,and overall well-being.

It has been said that the future belongs to those whobelieve in the beauty of their dreams. However, theleaders assembled at the 2001 GCHERA conferenceand our colleagues must do more than dream. We mustprovide the leadership and commitment to pursuesolutions to these complex issues. We must be thechange we wish to see.

BibliographyBlank, S. C. 1998. The end of agriculture in the

American portfolio. Westport, Conn.: QuoriumBooks.

Blank, S. C. 2000. “Is this California agriculture’s lastcentury?” California Agriculture 54(4): 23–25.

California Farm Bureau Federation. 2001. Facts andstats about California agriculture. www.cfbf.com/info/agfacts.

Dateline UC Davis. 1998. College of Agricultural andEnvironmental Sciences tops citations list. Decem-ber 7: 2.

Economic Research Service. 2000. Situation andoutlook report. Agricultural income and finance 74Feb. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department ofAgriculture.

Lacy, W. B., L. R. Lacy, and D. Hansen, In press.“Global food security, environmental sustainability,and poverty alleviation: Complementary or contra-dictory goals?” In Food security and environmentalquality, edited by R. Lal, D. Hansen, N. Uphoff,and S. Slack. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.

Manning, R. 2000. Foods frontier: The next greenrevolution. New York, N.Y.: North Point Press.

National Agricultural Statistics Service. 1999. Agricul-tural land values: Final estimates, 1994–1998.Statistical bulletin no. 957. Washington, D.C.:USDA Agricultural Statistics Board.

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National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2000. Agricul-tural prices. Washington, D.C.: USDA AgriculturalStatistics Board.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1999. 1997 census ofagriculture. www.nass.usda.gov/census.

US News Online. 2000. 2001 college rankings: Topnational public universities. www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natu_pub.

Chapter 3 - Opening Keynote Address

Globalization and the Contemporary University

M. Peter McPherson

President, Michigan State University

Michigan, USA

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Globalization—a world more closely tied together, aworld where events occurring in one place are morelikely to have an impact (and a faster impact) in anotherpart of the globe. Globalization is driven by theincreased speed and lower costs of moving money,information, goods and people. It is also driven by newinformation technology, more open trade, the spread ofdemocracy, the end of the cold war, and strong marketforces. Dramatic advances in science and technologyhave been underlying drivers. Science both enablesglobalization and is fed by it.

Globalization can be reversed by catastrophic eventscoupled, perhaps, with huge policy changes. In thedecades before World War I, globalization was on therise. In fact, as a percentage of world GDP, interna-tional trade in 1910 was about the same percentage as itis today.

World War I slowed the progress. One of the greatcatastrophic events in world history, it brought aboutcommunism in Russia, which led to the Soviet Union,and eventually to the cold war. Many argue that TheGreat Depression was in part an aftermath of WorldWar I, as was the rise of Hitler. Consequently, tradebarriers went up, and international trade was restricted.

It was only after World War II that globalization andthe integration of the world began to gain momentumagain, with the United Nations’ General Agreement onTariffs and Trade (GATT), the founding of a number ofnew international institutions, and significant policychanges.

Globalization has shown us an array of advantages.It has brought significant economic growth in someparts of the world; it has helped advance individualfreedom and democracy. In time, I believe, it will helpus solve many long-entrenched problems.

One such problem is child labor. In developedcountries, we now hear more about child labor prob-lems as a result of the global economy, mass communi-cation, and the Internet. With increasing pressure, we

are likely to see significant child labor reform in adecade or so.

But globalization has also brought challenges. Forexample, world markets, financial markets, andeconomies are much more sensitive to one another.The first day the market fell in 1987, I was ActingSecretary of the U.S. Treasury, and it wasn’t a goodday to be in that position. For the first time, the publicsaw clearly how interdependent the world financialmarkets had become. We continue to see this infinancial markets today.

There are also problems associated with people andgeographic areas that lose ground, hopefully onlytemporarily, because of economic shifts that comewith globalization. Certainly, people sometimes fallfurther behind as a result of international economicshifts. Creating opportunity for people with few skillsis a major issue.

Furthermore, although the world press is an advan-tage in improving communication worldwide, it is alsoperfectly capable of spreading global misinformation.

Whatever our view of the advantages and disadvan-tages, however, I don’t think that we really have muchchoice but to work for globalization. It makes sense,then, to have a conference focusing on the key area ofagriculture in an international context.

I hope a hundred years from now historians willlook at this period and say that the faster trade,communication, and technology of this era greatlyintegrated the world and that science enabled greaterglobalization. I also hope they will be able to say thatthis era was the beginning of a renaissance of well-being for people throughout the world.

Our primary question today is—What is the role thatuniversities with agricultural colleges should play tobring about that renaissance?

Many of the world’s universities have very commonissues they must address and similar problems they

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must solve. But for organizational purposes, I firstaddress universities in industrialized nations, and thenthose in developing nations.

Universities in DevelopedCountries

Agriculture colleges in developed countries arebecoming colleges of biology and life sciences, ratherthan agriculture colleges as traditionally defined. Weshould encourage this pattern to continue and encour-age stronger relationships with the social sciencesas well.

We need to have a more broadly defined mission foragricultural colleges in order to address today’s issuesand to sustain public support. There are major implica-tions for such a broader definition of our agriculturalmission.

Agricultural CurriculumIn curriculum, for example, the impact is substantial.

Today we know that our graduates who return home tofarm, in most cases, return to very different farms thanwe knew when we were students. I grew up on a farmin western Michigan where my father milked 50 cows.Now, most such small farms are gone. Today, a fewmiles from my father’s farm there are two farms, eachwith 2,000 cows. Today, most students in our agricul-ture colleges don’t go back to single-family farms.Those who go into farming usually go to large farmswhile others enter careers in agribusiness oragroindustry.

Today’s agriculture-related careers require that wetrain students differently than in years past. Ourstudents need more management and business skillsand a broader technical and science foundation, aswell as specific job knowledge.

Globalization means international experience shouldalso be an important component in the education oftoday’s students, including agriculture students.Michigan State University (MSU) probably has thelargest study abroad program of any U.S. university,and we expect to grow in the years ahead.

Instruction must change as well. We should bedelivering more Web courses. At MSU we had about4000 enrollments in Web-based courses in the lasttwelve months. We have also begun pairing ourprofessors with professors in other countries to team-teach distance learning courses.

In short, the curriculum for our College of Agricul-ture at Michigan State University and around theworld is changing and will continue to change to meetnew needs.

Research in AgricultureDramatic changes are also occurring in agricultural

research on our campuses in developed countries, andeven more change needs to occur. We now focus onissues that were not high on our agenda a generationor two ago. One key set of issues, of course, involvesthe environment and sustainable agriculture. What doyou do with the waste of that farm with 2,000 cows?What about the ground water? And it goes beyondthat. Some MSU professors think—and a number ofpeople are working at this—that proper tillage and fallcoverage may be a significant contributor to reducingglobal warming. We haven’t quantified the impactyet, but such research has real potential.

MSU, and other universities and institutions are alsoworking with Dow Chemical to see how biotechnol-ogy research can identify ways to use plants assubstitutes for petroleum to make certain materials.

Of course, issues such as how to grow plantsrequiring less fertilizer and pesticides remain impor-tant research problems. In addition, there are issuessuch as how to use microbes to clean up soil andwater.

Animal diseases and animal to human diseases areprominent research areas as well. Mad Cow diseasehas everyone’s attention. Michigan currently has aproblem of tuberculosis (TB) in their deer herds thathas spread to cattle in some limited areas. There isn’tmuch likelihood, we think, that bovine TB will betransmitted to humans; however, the state of Michiganjust last year provided $57 million for MSU to build anew animal disease diagnostic center. Colleges ofagriculture, veterinary medicine, and human medicineare finding many areas where they need to worktogether.

The new colleges of agriculture may well be centralto finding solutions to food safety; and at MSU andother universities, this is a major area of focus.

In brief, there is a whole set of issues that a genera-tion ago might not have been at the core of agriculturalresearch. Today these matters are central to theresearch agendas at many agriculture colleges. Weneed to drive our research further in these and othernew directions.

Under Peter McGrath’s leadership of NASULGC, a

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group of university leaders is working with ourfunding agencies—U.S. Department of Agriculture,National Science Foundation and others—to developprograms in which universities and funding agencieswork together on the related problems of food, health,agriculture, and environment.

Of course, such research and its applications areforms of outreach. That engagement is in the traditionof U.S. land-grant universities, and it must continue.

I think that in a decade or so we’re going to lookback and see that our large universities made majorcontributions to this broadly defined set of old andnew issues.

Land UseIn developed countries we have still another set of

problems. In many places, our agricultural land isdisappearing. For example, in southeast Michigan—greater Detroit—the largest urban center in Michigan,over a twenty-year period population only went upsome, but the developed land increased by much more.In many areas of the United States, land developmentis outpacing population growth.

This is an issue where urbanites, suburbanites, andrural people should be able to come together. Ingeneral, the urbanites and suburbanites don’t want tosee the farms disappear because many wish to haverural areas available. They view retaining rural areasas a quality of life issue. Many of us in the UnitedStates can certainly empathize with Europeans whowould not want a France or an England withoutcountryside. Clearly, the tourism industry does notwant farms and rural areas to disappear either. InMichigan and many other states, farming continuesto be a major economic factor, and we want it toremain so.

The heart of this issue is how to maintain a balancebetween competing needs. What land use rules orrequirements do we need? Universities certainly havea role in addressing this difficult issue. Can we find anagriculture that produces more value from the land?This is necessary because, in time, land will be soldfor non-agricultural use if value for that use is muchgreater than for agriculture. Solving our land useproblems is a policy issue our colleges of agriculturemust address and work with governments, business,and communities to resolve.

And another point concerning these public policyissues: It is obvious that science and technology aremajor drivers as we work on the many problems faced

by society. But many science and technology issuesare very controversial, and universities need to main-tain their unbiased role in the arbitration of facts. Thatis not going to be easy in the years ahead. How dowe colleges of agriculture maintain the broad publictrust that we’ve enjoyed over the generations? InMichigan, and I’m happy to say it’s still true, whenMichigan State makes a statement, the public gener-ally reacts by saying, “Yes, that’s probably right.”There is a heavy presumption in our favor. But asuniversities such as MSU receive more and morefunding from the private sector, can we continue tomaintain the disinterested scientific stance that sus-tains the public trust?

We are just starting to deal with this set of issues inU.S. universities. We may well need independentpanels of observers within our universities or someother approach to safeguard scientific independence. Iam not sure just how to do that, but I think over thenext few years we will come up with a range ofmodels because we cannot afford to lose publiccredibility. The public needs to have a disinterestedscientific perspective in a world where science is moreand more important in our daily lives.

Universities in DevelopingCountries—Africa

Let me turn now to developing countries and theiragricultural colleges. While we should not overlookthe major issues in parts of Latin America and Asia, Iwould like to focus on Africa because it represents thebiggest single concentrated set of developmentproblems that we have in the world.

Two-thirds of the population of Africa remains rural.Per capita food production, however, is no greatertoday than it was in 1970. Evidence is now clear thatwhere an area has such concentration of farmers andrural people, there is almost no historical examplewhere there has been a significant increase in people’sincome without increasing food production. Represen-tatives here from China would agree that China wouldnot be where it is today if there hadn’t been a hugeincrease in China’s food production over the last 20years.

Studies by IFPRI and others confirm that increasingfood production has a major multiplier impact. Whathappens is that when a farmer in Kenya producesmore, the farmer and his or her family will eat some ofit, and some of it will be sold. The money earned willbe used to buy other things, increasing nonfarm ruralincome as well. This multiplier impact has been well

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Chapter 3

documented. With regular increases of productionover ten to twenty years, you can significantly in-crease total income for rural areas. We are not talkingonly about more income just for the farmer; we aretalking about increased farm and rural income for awhole country.

The International DonorCommunity

Despite this evidence, over the last few years theinternational donor community has very substantiallydecreased support for agriculture and food production.In the last 12 or 13 years, AID’s support for agricul-ture has dropped by about two-thirds. For the totalbilateral donor community, including the UnitedStates, the support for agriculture has dropped about50 percent. The World Bank support for agriculturehas decreased by 75 percent, and the Bank’s internalprojections show that, in fact, such support will godown even further. These trends are alarming.

Why has this occurred? In my view, one reason isthat there is an urban bias among donors. Urbanitesare the people that you tend to talk to when you talk toa country. It is in urban areas that there is capacity todemonstrate, to turn over governments; that’s wherethe college students are. Another reason is that inAfrica we’ve focused more on disasters in the last 10to 15 years than on increasing growth and income. Wewill need to continue to deal with disasters, of course,but we cannot expect long-term improvements withoutgrowth and income.

We need to get back on track regarding support forfood production. I sense at least some movement byAfricans, and others, in reversing the pattern. ThePresident of Mali, the President of Ghana, and otherswere at a conference in Washington recently that anumber of us put together where we stronglyadvocated for the importance of support for foodproduction in Africa. In fact, I know that the Presidentof Mali made a point on this matter when he and otherAfrican leadership met with President Bush. The U.S.Administration was receptive. I think we are seeingsome movement.

International PartnershipsWe also need to consider what we could do with

additional resources for agriculture and rural income.I think universities in developed countries can andshould be at the very heart of this matter. Developedcountry universities need to have long-term partner-ships with African universities and countries. Such

relationships, which the United States encouragedextensively from the 60’s through the 80’s, paid off inmany cases. The relationships don’t need to cost agreat deal, but they need to be long-term. With a long-term relationship there develops a mutual capacity, aninterest, and knowledge about a particular country anduniversities and institutions in that country. Suchrelationships have proven to be very productive inpolicy change, education, and research.

Such relationships offer enormous educationalopportunities. In the past we were more likely to thinkabout bringing students back to the United States or toEurope, and certainly some of developed countrytraining needs to be done here; however, with Web-based technology we can often do more and do so atless cost. Some of this will be educating the educa-tors. Professors in developing country universitiescould help teach more developed country studentsusing the Web. More than ever, relationships can betwo-way streets.

Close, long-term research relationships with univer-sities in developing countries are important too.Because of the technology, it is becoming much easierto exchange information. I remember at AID when wewanted to increase the production of sorghum in theSudan for example, we worried about where to placethe people for this major project. Should we placethem back at a major university in the United States,or should we have them in Sudan? Today that may bean easier decision or at least a different decision.There is greater possibility that the African-basedprofessor can be in close touch with the United Statesbased knowledge and people. Obviously what weneed and should get is people from both developedand developing country institutions to have access tonew knowledge in real time and, of course, access toeach other. That is how you have the capacity toreally work together on problems.

It is tempting to say that Africa needs a greenrevolution. No doubt that will be required, but it willbe a different revolution than the last one. Africa hassuch a range of soils, climates, and crops. We need toincrease production of some subsistence crops likeyams, millets, and sorghum, but we also need greaterproduction of crops which can be exported and/or soldbeyond the farmer’s own community.

Biotechnology is absolutely central to achievingresults in the time required. The Nigerian ambassadorto the United States had an op-ed article in TheWashington Post a few months ago, which had signifi-cant impact in Washington. He said, in effect, “It’s

21


fine for you in the United States and Europe to becritical about biotechnology, but your people aren’tstarving.” We’ve got to have the tools of biotech-nology to move forward. Speed is critical andbiotechnology can really help. We are learning how toadequately regulate biotechnology research andproducts. When you look at the fact that agricultureproduction per capita in Africa is no more than it was30 years ago, we certainly have some problems.Biotechnology is a central tool in remedying thissituation.

Let’s look at information technology problems facedby the universities in developing countries. I was at aconference not long ago where the Aga Kahn sug-gested that we need a global digital library. I can seedonors, particularly The World Bank and some others,working to achieve that library. I think that an indi-vidual scientist in Kenya, Uganda, or Mali shouldhave the capacity to link into the global intellectualcommunity. We don’t have enough of that capacitytoday, although more and more computer linkages arebecoming accessible. But even if you have thelinkages, professional journals are not generallyavailable.

Here’s what happens in the United States, and itimpacts Africa. The Federal Government fundsPurdue, Michigan State, or Cal-Davis, and theseuniversities put in some resources, and their scientistsdo the research. To publish their findings, researchershave to sign away their copyright to a publishingcompany, which then sells the journal through sub-scription back to the universities at rate increasesmuch greater than inflation. The publishing compa-nies also sell the journal to the rest of the world atthese rates. The problem is that there really isn’t acapacity in much of sub-Saharan Africa to buy jour-nals at such prices. Some progress is being made, andNIH has worked at this. Recently some medicaljournals agreed to reduce their rates. But I keepthinking some group of federal government agenciesis going to say, “If you get our grant, professor anduniversity, you can’t give away the copyright todeveloping countries, and the journal in which youpublish will also be expected to have the articleavailable on the Web for developing countries.

I often feel a little sad when I shake the hands ofnew doctoral graduates from many parts of Africa whoare going back to Africa or another developing area.Too often, within a very few years, they are no longeron the cutting edge of their field because they lack

access to the latest information. Something needs tobe done.

I think that we are at an important moment inhistory. It’s not an irreversible moment, as it wasduring World War I. However, I think it is expectedthat globalization will continue to speed up under theimpetus of science and other forces.

Agricultural colleges, as we are beginning toredefine ourselves, have a significant role in bothindustrialized and developing countries. If we worktogether, we can contribute greatly to a renaissance ofwell being for people around the world.

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Chapter 4

Bringing Change and New Science to the Developing WorldPaul Ming-Hsien Sun

Vice Chair of Board, Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center

Taiwan

23

About three decades ago, the world faced a globalfood shortage that experts predicted would lead tocatastrophic famines. The Green Revolution, however,held famine at bay. Scientists found ways to increaseyields of some of the world’s most important cerealcrops, such as rice and wheat, and farmers in thedeveloping world implemented the innovations withsuccess. In contrast, the challenge confronting today’sworld is that simply increasing cereal productivitymay not have the impact it did thirty years ago.

New Global ChallengesWorld human population currently is growing by

about 100 million people each year, a global rate ofincrease of about 1.7 percent from our current popula-tion of over six billion. This means, at the very least,the world’s farmers must increase food production 50percent to feed some two billion more people by 2020,and maybe as much as 100 percent if current trends inmeat consumption increase. These stark numbers haveled some food policy analysts to call for a new andgreener revolution that will again increase productivityand boost production.

But feeding the world in the 21st century willrequire not only food availability but food security;i.e., access to the food a person requires to lead ahealthy and productive life. For specific populations, itmeans a person’s ability to grow and purchase food, asneeded. Food security focuses attention on areas suchas income, which must be sufficient to purchase food;markets, which must be competitive to keep priceslow; and natural resources, which we must conserve toensure sustainable, long-term productivity.

Regrettably, the statistics on food security are grim.The Food and Agriculture Organization estimated asmany as 840 million people currently do not haveenough food to eat. About 20 percent of the peopleliving in the developing world do not get enoughcalories, enough protein, or both. The companionproblem of micronutrient deficiencies affects evenmore people in the developing world, particularly

children and pregnant women. An estimated twobillion lack sufficient iron in their diets, with about 1.2billion weakened by iron-deficiency anemia. VitaminA deficiency affects about 125 million children andhas produced irreversible eye damage in an estimated14 million. Hunger of this dimension traditionally hasbeen among the rural poor who could not growenough food to meet their needs. Now it has spread togrowing numbers of the urban poor who cannot affordthe food they need. Often food is available but notaccessible. Throughout the developing world, hungeris linked to poverty.

Poverty in the developing world has many roots,including political and social discrimination. Butmany are poor because they have no tangible assets,no land, no livestock, no formal education, and few, ifany, technical skills. Many either settled where theland is only marginally productive at best or wheregovernments have failed to provide the basic infra-structure essential to economic development. Othersmigrated to urban areas.

Yet, the issue of food and agriculture does not endhere. Increases in the productivity of food crops arepeaking, even on lands where the Green Revolutionwas most successful. Irrigation and fertilization havereached their effective limits; the ability of cerealbreeders to develop higher-yielding varieties hasreached a plateau. With this situation, the environmenthas assumed a new importance.

Many of the most promising lands are already undercultivation, erosion is taking a growing toll, watershortages loom in many areas, and the majority of theworld’s natural resources, such as forests, grazinglands, fisheries, and wildlife, are overexploited. Theloss of forests means more than the loss of trees.Agroforests protect watersheds, prevent erosion,minimize the impact of floods and drought, andstabilize local climates. Perhaps, most importantly,disappearing agroforests threaten the world’sbiodiversity, which is essential to the future foodsupply. For several major environmental problems,agriculture seems to be both culprit and victim.

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Meeting these new challenges has become evenmore difficult because so few leaders acknowledgethat the world faces urgent food and other agriculturalproblems. Sharp declines in public spending foragricultural education and research over the past twodecades demonstrate their lack of concern. As pres-sures increase to expand agricultural production and,at the same time, conserve natural resources throughwise use and management, leaders cannot ignore thecrucial role of public policy nor the need for educa-tion, which must support the process that leads toeffective policy making.

Now in the new millennium, the world communitymust overcome new challenges, including poverty,food insecurity, environmental degradation, andgenetic resource preservation. Only if educators,researchers, extension agents, producers, and decisionmakers have the will to combine their knowledge,skills, and experiences can the world undertake suchdiverse and serious issues.

Effecting Change to Meet theChallenges

In retrospect, agriculture has been the cornerstone ofdevelopment in many emerging industrialized coun-tries in Asia. Developing countries could emulate thismodel. Currently, more than 70 percent of people inpoor countries depend on the land for their livelihood.Yet, they cannot achieve agricultural growth todaywithout employing methods that preserve the produc-tivity of natural resources.

The science of agriculture is in the throes of massivechange. Research is one key means by which theworld increases and improves its knowledge ofagriculture. Below are the important factors I recom-mend for making changes in agricultural research.

BiotechnologyFor thousands of years, farmers have selectively

bred crops and animals to improve output. In modernagriculture, the same strategy is in use. Scientists usethis strategy at national agricultural research systems,universities, and international agricultural researchcenters (IARCs). Business and industry use thisstrategy in the private sector. Most selective breedingis aimed at enhancing production and increasing theability of plants to resist disease and other environ-mental stresses.

Biotechnology has added new dimensions to agri-cultural research. For instance, tissue culture helps

produce disease-free plants, which increases thedeveloping world’s productivity. As a case in point,the banana tissue culture work, developed in Taiwanfor commercial production of healthy seedlings, hasmade it possible to boost the banana industry inVietnam. Using molecular marker techniques hasshortened the time and reduced the costs in developingnew crop varieties, both in the laboratory and in thefield. Another success in biotechnology is the identifi-cation of new DNA-based tools to diagnose plantdiseases.

Biotechnology can change the makeup of plants inways conventional breeders only dream about, such asallowing plants to grow in saline soils, remain un-touched by weed-killing pesticides, or boost theirnutritional content. The insertion of a gene thatproduces beta-carotene in a rice plant is anothersuccess story. Since rice is a staple in Asia as well asother regions, this genetically altered plant approachesVitamin A deficiencies with a potential solution toirreversible eye damage, a major health problem.Researchers are also working to add genes to rice andvegetables to boost the iron content and help preventiron-deficiency anemia.

Researchers see other gains with genes that conferresistance to insects or diseases, or that counter less-than-ideal growing conditions. Some developingworld farmers are already sharing in the benefits ofbiotechnology. In China, for example, farmers withlimited acreage are saving money and labor by grow-ing transgenic cotton for bollworm resistance.

Scientists modify most genetically improved cropvarieties only for a single trait, such as disease resis-tance or specific quality. The rapid progress they makein cutting-edge genomics may enhance plant breedingas they identify genes that are more functional. Thismay enable them to conduct more successful breedingfor such complex traits as high temperature, flooding,drought, and salinity. Breeding for such traits has hadlimited success with conventional breeding, so thesegenomic advances would greatly benefit people inpoverty who farm marginal lands.

Biotechnology cannot, however, make depletedlands more fertile or ensure water to irrigate crops.Meeting those two needs impels commodity-specificbiotechnology research to embrace a broader vision.Such a vision includes sound management of naturalresources, as well as productivity and profitability ofsmaller farming; promoting synergies among live-stock, agroforestry, food and cash crop, aquaculture;integrated management of soil, water, and nutrients;

25


integrated pest management; attention to postharvestlosses; and recognition of the socioeconomic realitiesof farmers.

On the other hand, because many breakthroughs inbiotechnology are the products of proprietary science,development organizations have been concerned thatsignificant advances will not be available to the poorin resolving their problems. Although scientificresearch is a long-term process with no guarantees ofsuccess, investors would not risk such sizeable sumsunless they knew they could protect the intellectualproperty rights to any new discoveries. These rightsare the only way they recoup their investments andmake a profit. That protection is necessary to thesuccess of this kind of research, but it raises the veryreal question of whether proprietary science will everserve the public good.

Natural Resource ManagementMost natural resources are renewable, but some are

not. Scientists can study each resource indepen-dently—soils, water, rivers, coastal zones, forests,biodiversity—to understand its flows and cycles.But together, natural resources form a system thatresearchers must consider as a whole.

We in the agricultural sciences must change ourthinking—from classical agronomy to ecologicalscience and system dynamics; from factor-orientedmanagement to integrated natural resource manage-ment. The agricultural researcher, therefore, mustassess and study the combined stresses and replenish-ment capabilities of different ecosystems to achievemaximum productivity. This approach has helpedIARCs in providing new varieties suited to conditionsin a given ecosystem.

The challenges of natural resource management aresystemwide, though the precise problems vary fromregion to region and from ecosystem to ecosystem.Water provides a good example. Unless fresh-waterresources are properly managed everywhere, watershortages are likely to become the most severe con-straint on world food production. Scientists havefound that irrigation that is more efficient can meetabout half the anticipated increase in water demand.Efficient irrigation can also ease problems caused bytoo much water, such as waterlogging and salinity.Scientists are also working to identify techniques forimproving water management in regions alreadyconfronting shortages and for helping other areas toconserve and use water resources more effectively,averting future shortages.

Farmers/producers can adapt effective tools ofresource management to meet local needs, withgrowing emphasis on precision farming and suchstrategies as integrated pest management and inte-grated nutrient supply systems, which protect theenvironment and help preserve the resource base.IARC research is showing how natural resourcemanagement can provide the foundation needed toachieve the goals of agricultural sustainability in thedeveloping world. Today’s advanced tools—e.g.,geographic information systems, remote sensing, andglobal positioning systems—and methodologies forecological analysis and computer-based modelingcould facilitate approaches that are even morecomprehensive.

Resource management research will also play animportant role in helping poor farmers adapt to theconsequences of ongoing climatic change and mitigateits deleterious effects. We must conduct research todevelop technologies that not only help to promote thesustainable use of natural resources but also mitigatethe impact of agriculture on climate. Although suchdevelopment is critical to the agriculture sectors ofdeveloping countries, they may not have the scientificor institutional capacities to undertake the requiredresearch.

Information TechnologyInformation is an extraordinarily valuable resource

for all aspects of agricultural research and develop-ment. It ranges from simple statements of fact orinstructions for the practitioner, through a comparisonof options for the policy maker, to a comprehensive setof detailed facts, figures, and contact points for theresearcher. The recent convergence of computingtechnology and telecommunications is having animpact on all areas of agricultural research anddevelopment. We can transform the phenomenalgrowth of electronic networks in the past few yearsinto a more interactive global agricultural researchsystem. Unlike radio or television, the Internet facili-tates two-way communication, making it possible totap into and share the innovative talents and experi-ences of scientists and their partners in all parts of theworld. Scientists can send vast amounts of knowledgeanywhere quickly and cheaply, making available to thedeveloping world the large databases, libraries, remotesensing, gene banks, and other sources that were oncefar too expensive or remote.

But modern information technology’s impact is notjust for information storage and databases, but for

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Chapter 4

focusing, organizing, and streamlining agriculturalresearch. With appropriate information from storeddatabases, we can develop computer-based modeling.And among other things, the modeling will assist inagronomic decision making—to integrate crop andanimal production and to predict the suitability of anyspecific crop, cropping sequence, or natural resourcemanagement in a given environment. Industrializedcountries have already employed many of thesemodels. Continuing work should focus on developingcountries where researchers, scientists, and practitio-ners desire increased productivity and appropriatenatural resource management and where they continueto wait for the necessary information.

Furthermore, the computer-based expert system hasthe most potential in delivering information andknowledge beyond the agricultural research commu-nity in industrialized countries and into the realm ofpartners in developing countries. Increasing numbersof initiatives use this kind of technology for thediagnosis and treatment of crop protection problems.Based on the encapsulated knowledge of experts inparticular fields, this system provides powerful aids tothe diagnosis of disease symptoms. It transfers knowl-edge directly to whoever needs it most. But communi-cation between expert and partner can be a two-wayprocess. Digitized image management allows theoriginal to be faithfully reproduced at high resolution.In this case, for example, a partner can transmit animage of an unknown disease symptom to an expertfor identification.

Advanced information technology provides also anunequaled potential as a training or educational aid tostudents and extension agents. Trainers can incorpo-rate teaching or extension materials into a Web page,readily accessed by the user. They may also createinteractive, multimedia learning centers and hot linksto remote areas.

While the potential of using advanced informationtechnology is undeniable and undoubtedly opens upnew vistas for the transfer of scientific information,the costs for developing countries may still be high,but they are steadily reducing. The real significance ofthe microcomputer revolution is that computersdirectly deliver information and information process-ing systems to users, to a large extent bypassing theneed for sophisticated information infrastructure,which does not exist in many developing countries,and is difficult to sustain where it does. Some scien-tific organizations have offered to the developingworld special access to electronic scientific journals, a

practice likely to spread because of its low cost. Asthese organizations release the world’s scientific andtechnical literature, this new knowledge flows todeveloping and industrialized nations alike.

Integrating UniversitiesMany universities in developed countries predomi-

nate in public sector agricultural research and develop-ment. These universities provide a pool of well-trainedscientists with substantial capacity for executing notonly agricultural research and extension but also basicresearch of new sciences. Universities also train thenext generation of high-caliber scientists.

On the other hand, one of the remarkable accom-plishments of the Green Revolution was the establish-ment of a system of agricultural colleges and universi-ties in tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. Begin-ning in the late 1950s, universities from India to thePhilippines were patterned in varying degrees after theU.S. land-grant model of teaching, research, andextension. Unfortunately, since the mid-1970s, atten-tion to agricultural higher education and institutionbuilding in developing countries in Asia has dimin-ished. Agricultural colleges and universities in devel-oping countries are placed on the periphery of agricul-tural research and development; usually they haveweak linkages with National Agricultural ResearchInstitutes (NARI). They also face many problems thathinder their effectiveness as research and teachinginstitutions.

The basic strength of universities in industrializedcountries is that their research and training functionsare complementary to each other because research isan integral part of postgraduate education. Universitiesfrequently have an institutional culture and a relativelyautonomous status conducive to research. The greaterflexibility in operating procedures and regulations inuniversities in developed countries may make it easierfor university scientists to obtain funding and engagein collaborative research with other research institutesand funding entities. Indeed, in some countries, it maybe most appropriate to place universities in the lead inexecuting research and to give them the status, respon-sibility, and funding usually associated with NARI.The move toward looking at research systems as awhole will inevitably elevate the role of universities inresearch. To better integrate universities into nationalagricultural research systems (NARS) in developingcountries in tropical Asia, I recommend the followingmeasures:

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1. Shift more funding to competitive grants to tapuniversity skills in research. To ensure NARSdevelopment, concentrate effort in establishing andsupporting research in the university sector.Upgrading universities will be critical to improv-ing the human resource capacity for scientificresearch in NARS;

2. Develop collaborative research programs, e.g.,through a special fund, between NARI and univer-sities;

3. Provide opportunities for staff exchanges, such asgraduate students undertaking thesis research inthe NARI and NARI scientists taking sabbaticalleaves in universities; and

4. Channel more donor support for foreign postgradu-ate training to develop local university capacity inboth undergraduate and postgraduate training. Thischange may begin with master’s degree programs,followed by doctoral degree programs. Given thehigh cost of foreign postgraduate training, asustainable NARS must have capacity to producemost of its replacement scientists.

To this end, NARS must institute policy and struc-tural reforms to expand university roles in research,and universities themselves must adopt policies anddevelop capabilities to conduct research.

Universities with substantial agricultural researchand development may need strategic plans, monitoringsystems, and systems for setting priorities. Many mustgive attention to research management and policiesand must address operational issues similar to those inNARI. These issues include:

• providing incentives for research;• maintaining and upgrading research facilities;• encouraging contract and grant research, funded by

diverse sources;• obtaining intellectual property rights and commer-

cializing some research products and services; and• improving the utility of universities’ most valuable

assets—relatively low-cost postgraduate students.

GCHERA’s Call to theChallenges

Though the challenge of feeding a growing popula-tion in the 21st century appears vastly complex, threestriking advances could make the task feasible:integrated gene management, natural resource man-agement, and information technology. Together, theseoffer the potential to radically reshape the world’sagricultural and food systems. The Global Consortium

of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture(GCHERA) is uniquely positioned to use thesepowerful new scientific breakthroughs. As it alwayshas been in the past, higher education has been aleader in the application of molecular biology and thetechniques of natural resource management as well asa pioneer in using information technology to meet thechallenge of fighting poverty and feeding the world.

Molecular biology encompasses the new under-standing of how genes work, as well as the techniquesand tools of biotechnology that make it possible tomanipulate genetic material as never before. Theinformation and communications revolution presents atremendous new opportunity for GCHERA to bringscientific knowledge and indigenous and local knowl-edge together to bear on global challenges, and tomake this information available to its constituents.GCHERA must be at the forefront of harnessing thesefrontier sciences and technologies to pursue itsmission.

Used appropriately, these breakthroughs could leadto improved productivity and the more diversifiedcrops required for future needs. It is possible, how-ever, that these advances will not be equally availableto developed and developing nations. One of the mainpriorities of GCHERA, then, is to work closely withIARCs to ensure that the new science and informationtechnology enhances the food security of the poorrather than impairing it.

These advances in the new science and informationtechnology will complement and enhance existingapproaches, not replace them. GCHERA may wish toconsider the network concept, extensively applied byIARCs that specialize in crop improvement. Forexample, IRRI in the Philippines, ICRISAT in India,and AVRDC in Taiwan have established regional andsubregional networks for variety testing, collaborativeresearch, personnel training, and informationexchange. GCHERA may establish similar regionalor subregional networks for collaboration amongagricultural colleges and universities in new sciencesresearch, distance education, graduate training, andscientific information exchange.

That approach could also apply to the role theConsortium must play in ensuring that the developingworld reaps the benefits of the gene revolution.GCHERA is well positioned to apply these toolsswiftly to the problems of the developing world. Indoing so, GCHERA may fulfill its mandate to ensuresustainable food security for the generations to come.

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Chapter 5

Interdisciplinary Research in Agriculture

for Better Food and NutritionRoger N. Beachy

President, Danforth Plant Science CenterMissouri, USA

29

The study and practice of agriculture have changedsubstantially in the past ten years and may be quitedifferent from what many of us studied as graduatestudents. My training was in classical plant pathologyat Michigan State University, and my interests laterled me to the emerging field of molecular biology. AtThe Scripps Research Institute, I recognized morefully the discrepancy between the technical ap-proaches being applied to modern biomedical sciencesversus modern agriculture. One of the research goalsat the Danforth Center is to bridge that gap throughinterdisciplinary research.

The Center’s Mission andDevelopment

The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center aims tointegrate and incorporate cutting edge research ofselected aspects of the life sciences into plant scienceand agriculture. Established in 1998 as an indepen-dent, nonprofit 501(c)3 entity, the Center’s mission isto:

• Increase knowledge of plant biology.• Apply any new knowledge to improve health and

nutrition and sustainable production in agriculture.• Facilitate the rapid development and commercial-

ization of promising technologies and products.• Contribute to the education and training of graduate

and postdoctoral students, scientists, andtechnicians from around the world.

Research at the Danforth Center is supported bygrants and contracts, primarily from the federalgovernment, from the Center’s relatively modestendowment, and, in the future, fees that are derivedfrom licensing of technology. The Center holds andowns its own intellectual property much as universi-ties do.

The Danforth Foundation and the Monsanto Fundprovided the initial funding for the Danforth Center

with no “strings” attached to the funds. Additionalsupport came from the state of Missouri. With theseresources, we developed a 150,000-square foot, state-of-the-art research facility that opens in October, 2001.When fully staffed, the Center will have 17 to 20principal investigators and sufficient space for 250scientists, plus support and administrative staff. Thefacility was constructed to maximize opportunities forscientific collaboration. Its design provides researcherswith opportunities to interact daily, hourly, or minute-by-minute, sharing information and equipment thatwill drive discovery in the plant and life sciences intoa new era.

Modern agricultural research must expand itstechnical capacity to meet three critical challenges:producing greater supplies of food to nourish agrowing population; sustaining the environmentthroughout the production process; and extendingresearch to embrace food safety and nutrition as wellas production.

The Center’s broad goals are to:

• Conduct research at the cutting edge of science.• Contribute to nutrition and health in developing

countries.• Improve the quality of nutrition and health in

developed countries.• Recognize the rights and needs of developing

countries in intellectual property policies.• Gain national and international recognition based

upon outstanding science.

The facility will have state-of-the-art instrumenta-tion in cell biology, computational and structuralbiology, biochemistry, and chemistry, as well asmolecular physiology and pathology, and genetics. Ofnecessity, it will include nearly all of the scientificequipment required for basic research in plant biology,including functional genomics and proteomics.

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Chapter 5

The Center’s Partnerships andLeadership

Because we have limited numbers of staff and otherresources and a focused research mission, the Centerhas developed partnerships with three major land-grant institutions: University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign; Purdue University; and University ofMissouri, Columbia. Other essential partners areWashington University in St. Louis, the MonsantoCompany, and the Missouri Botanical Garden, withone of the largest collections of plant and biodiversity.

Through collaborative research efforts, the partnerinstitutions develop programs and initiatives in a muchbroader range of disciplines than those representedsolely at the Danforth Center. We are not an instituteof agriculture, yet the science we do will likelyinterface with research conducted in many depart-ments in colleges of agriculture, including depart-ments of nutrition.

The Center’s distinguished Board of Directorsincludes members from the public and private sectorsand the scientific and business communities, as well aschancellors and presidents of the partner institutions.Board Chairman William Danforth is a former chan-cellor of Washington University. A Scientific Advi-sory Board reports to the Board on the quality ofscience and the progress the Center has made towardmeeting its scientific goals. The Science LiaisonCommittee, consisting of scientific leaders from eachpartner institution, formulates interactions and encour-ages research partnerships between institutions andindividual scientists.

The Unique ResearchEnvironment

To accomplish the Center’s goals, it is imperativethat we establish a world-class research environmentbuilt upon synergy between scientists. The researchenvironment at the Danforth Center will be somewhatdifferent from those at research universities. First, thephysical setting encourages collaboration amonginvestigators and strives to minimize “empire-build-ing.” Second, state-of-the-art equipment is availablefor all Center researchers and affiliated partners.Third, much of the research at the Danforth Centerwill be interdisciplinary and collaborating scientistswill solve their scientific problems using physical,biochemical, and biological approaches. Fourth,scientists and support staff are not tenured and signmultiyear contracts; contracts are renewable based

upon performance standards. Evaluation for contractrenewal for principal investigators will include reviewof interactions and collaborations. Fifth, with notenure system, the Danforth Center expects its scien-tists to secure a portion of their salaries from grantsand contracts. Lastly, most principal investigators areadjunct faculty members at one or more of the aca-demic partner institutions and perform a limitedamount of service at the affiliated institution. Graduatestudents at partner institutions may choose to conducttheir research projects at the Danforth Center and willreceive degrees from the academic institution.

The Center’s InitiativesDuring the next 5 to 10 years, research at the

Danforth Center will focus on five primary initiatives,each of which draw heavily on expertise in computa-tional and structural biology, biochemistry, cellbiology, and genetics.

The International Laboratory forTropical Agricultural Biotechnology

Established in 1991, this organization conductsresearch and provides training for students and otherscientists from developing countries. During the pastten years, this laboratory trained more than 130scientists from 20 countries, 70 percent of whom wererepatriated to their home countries.

The International Laboratory for Tropical Agricul-tural Biotechnology (ILTAB) is currently focusing oncassava, an important food crop in Africa and LatinAmerica. The goal is to increase the nutritional valueand productivity of cassava, while lowering its highsusceptibility to many diseases.

Three other research initiatives at the DanforthCenter have potential applications in future ILTABresearch programs.

Improving Plants for HumanHealth and Nutrition

The initiative to improve plants for human healthand nutrition includes research programs that seek toimprove levels of bioavailable micro- and macronutri-ents, (e.g., vitamins, iron, zinc, copper, etc.) andchanging the levels of certain phytochemicals toimprove the health benefits of foods.

The world population will require greater amountsof food of high quality and nutritional value. TheWorld Health Organization and other sources reportthat more than two billion people suffer to some

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degree from iron anemia. Iodine deficiency causesdisorders in 740 million people. Twenty-three percentof births each year show growth retardation due tomalnutrition. Many children under the age of fivesuffer chronic malnutrition. This research initiativeseeks to address some of these issues.

The other initiatives at the Danforth Center include:

• Plant nutrition and studies to improve plant responseto water stress;

• Studies of novel mechanisms of pest and diseaseresistance; and

• Studies to enhance production of novel materialsand biobased products in plants.

PartnershipsSince our founding, we have been reasonably

successful in securing funding from public, private,and government sources. To date, we have receivedgrants and contracts from five different companiesfrom three countries, and from the NSF, NIH, DOE,and NASA. The private sector contracts are relativelymodest in scope and support the work of individualresearchers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) Agriculture Research Service will sponsortwo researchers for studies to improve soybean quality.While housed at the Danforth Center, these scientistswill retain strong linkages to the University of Mis-souri, Columbia, and other soybean researchers in theregion. Agreements for other research collaborationsare being developed with national and internationalprograms around the world.

The ProcessGiven that there are many more good ideas for

research than there are funds to conduct research,especially in the exciting fields of plant and animalgenomics and proteomics, it may be essential toprioritize research goals in agriculture to meet thelonger-term challenges. The critical question in thisprocess is: Who chooses the targets for research?

In the academic environment, we ask our scientiststo decide what they want to work on and expect themto search for grants and contracts to provide resources.In a corporate setting, the director of research or agroup leader often makes the decisions. The USDA hasseveral levels of key personnel that establish direction.At the National Science Foundation, it’s the leader anda broad consensus that establishes funding initiatives.

Perhaps as administrators, we should take theinitiative to examine our institutional researchdecision-making process. With good input, many of

us can identify which areas are most important to ourinstitutional mission. I am suggesting that we setresearch priorities with a broader range of stakehold-ers than was done in the past: include farmer/produc-ers, technologists/scientists, private interests, consum-ers, regulatory agencies, economists, social scientists,and possibly politicians.

After setting research priorities, a team may estab-lish the role of basic and cross-disciplinary research,coupled with a goal-oriented direction to achieve thedesired end. This approach characterizes many of theDanforth Center research programs which involveinteractions with partner institutions. Our researchfaculty will bring to the Danforth Center a broad rangeof technical skills, including computational andstructural biology, cell biology, chemistry and bio-chemistry, molecular physiology and pathology, andgenetics.

Research collaborations within the Center and withscientists at partner institutions will add additionalscientific skills and bring higher value to the researchprograms. Such synergy will enable scientists at theCenter to address complex research questions. Thesecooperative relationships will provide the means forscientists to move beyond genomics and gene sequen-ces into the more exciting arena of protein function,and to develop new plant varieties that achieve thelong-term goals in food, nutrition, and agriculture.

The Initial Phase ofAgri-biotechnology

In the initial phase of agricultural biotechnology,private sector-public sector collaborations successfullydeveloped technology and traits, some of which werecommercialized. This led to new products that reducedthe use of certain agrochemicals, bringing directbenefits to the farmer/producer and the environmentand indirect benefits to the consumer. The collabora-tion lessened in part because only the private sectorcould finance the costs required for product approvaland commercialization of new products. Becauseregulatory approval of new products is costly, publicsector research institutions are virtually excluded fromparticipating in product development and commercial-ization, a phenomenon that may dramatically impactthe development of new products in the future.

The Second PhaseDuring the past ten years much was learned about

“molecular” plant breeding, quantitative traits, proteindesign, and gene construction. Yet, we are poorly

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prepared to use the massive amount of new informa-tion in applications that will benefit humankind in this,the second phase of agricultural biotechnology. Duringthis phase, scientists will conduct research to moredirectly benefit the consumer, the environment, andthe farmer producer. We will continue to adapt marker-assisted breeding and genetic transformation tech-niques to produce crops with higher yields, greatertolerance to drought and other abiotic stresses, andreduced reliance on certain agrochemicals. However,there will be greater emphasis on developing foodswith increased nutritional value, including higherlevels of vitamins, microelements, and beneficialphytochemicals. Our research will correlate therelationships between food composition and healthand will verify the long-term benefits (if any) of foodsand food constituents on certain health conditions,including cancers, diabetes, obesity, senility, andothers. This will bring greater opportunities forcollaborations between plant biologists, agriculturalscientists, human and animal nutritionists, and healthresearchers than ever before.

During this phase, there are many opportunities forbroad interdisciplinary research between manyscientific fields and for creating even more researchpartnerships. And, while public sector-private sectorpartnerships will conduct some of the research relatedto food and health, we expect more government-sponsored research in this arena. Consequently, weanticipate that consumers may develop greater confi-dence in the new food products that are developed as aresult of this research.

Many factors make for a successful partnership.Some of us have experienced failed research partner-ships and look back to find that they were poorlyconceived, did not involve appropriate partners orstakeholders, did not attract sustainable funding, orsuffered from lack of infrastructure. Even in the bestsituations, we often plan poorly and fail to use avail-able resources wisely. Consequently, research grantsare not renewed and partnerships are disrupted. Inmany cases, we need better preparation and betterstakeholder involvement as well as better managementand cost accountability to increase the likelihood thatpartnerships will succeed.

Sharing Technologies withDeveloping Nations

Most if not all of the research in agricultural bio-technology has either a direct or indirect relevance tofood production and human nutrition in developing

nations. Demographers predict population increases of20 to 25 percent in many countries in Africa and Asiaduring the next thirty years. GCHERA’s future missionis perhaps most apparent in these areas.

A recent report from the United Nations Develop-ment Program (UNDP) concluded that improving theeconomic situations in depressed and transitionaleconomies and relieving poverty around the world willdepend heavily on investments in new, as well asolder, technologies. In this report, agricultural biotech-nology was specifically highlighted as being importantfor the advancement of developing countries. Suchinvestment requires building the intellectual capacitiesof entities in all countries. The UNDP also warned ofthe negative impacts that antitechnology protestors canhave on the scientific advancement of underdevelopednations.

Building PartnershipsThese and similar challenges to sharing of scientific

development should embolden GCHERA members intheir goals to develop and enrich cooperative educa-tion and research programs between institutions in thenorth and south. The forms of cooperation in thefuture must take new shapes, different from those ofthe past. Programs must involve research of directvalue to developing countries rather than promotingmodels that worked in Europe and the United States.Here are opportunities to develop long-lasting partner-ships that bring added value to all partners, includingtransmitting scientific data electronically and applyingmodern technologies to local crops.

There are increasing numbers of small technologycompanies in India, China, Bangladesh, and othercountries that work in collaboration with externaluniversities and private sector companies in researchand development. These partnerships are especiallycrucial as the biological sciences move forward in thepost-DNA sequencing eras, and eventually findapplications to food and agriculture. Scientists inacademic institutions can play key roles in makingcooperative research programs succeed.

Intellectual Property BarriersWhile great potential exists for strong cooperative

partnerships among institutions, obvious and perhapscritical barriers can block productivity within suchpartnerships. Among these, the barriers of intellectualproperty (IP) may be the greatest. Many universitiesand institutes take strong IP positions that protect theirinvestment in research and infrastructure, includinginvestment in intellectual capital. Most academic

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institutions develop contractual and licensing agree-ments that relinquish control of key enabling technolo-gies to a single licensee. Such licensing can have adampening, if not devastating, effect on the use of newtechnology in cooperative research and developmentagreements. In particular, scientists and institutionalofficials in developing countries are reluctant to applytechnologies, including those in the agriculture andfood sectors, that might restrict the production and/orlocal commercialization of products. Sometimes thevery discussion of IP issues dissuades from negotia-tions those who are not familiar with the nuances oflicensing, patenting, and marketing. Often the realityof the situation is much less onerous than theperception, yet the lack of expertise in the IP arenacompletely blocks the use of certain technologies outof “fear of the unknown.”

I suggest that the academic sector has unwittinglyparticipated in this problem because of policies builton undue expectations. Academic institutions haveinvested heavily in new facilities and expensivefaculty and, in return, expect faculty to conductcutting-edge science that attracts grants and contractsand to make discoveries that may lead to IP that canbring licensing fees. Few licenses in agriculturalbiotechnology are likely to be sufficiently lucrative tojustify the high expectations of most academic institu-tions. Yet potential licensees value patented technolo-gies much more than non-patented technologies. It isnot uncommon for a licensing agreement to be exclu-sive; some institutions go so far as to assign mostpatents to a single entity. Returning licensing fees tothe inventor can act as a deterrent to keep the investi-gator from leaving the institution. Or, the practice canencourage the inventor to begin a new company thatthrough license agreements can benefit the institutionas well as the company.

Intellectual Property ReformsIf the inventor wishes to use previously assigned

technologies for cooperative research and develop-ment in developing countries, it can be difficult orimpossible to recover the rights from a sole licenseefor this purpose. This can restrict applications ofrelevant new technologies in developing countries,regardless of the validity of the patent in the countryof interest.

At the Danforth Center, we take the position that wewill retain the right to use all technologies developedand patented at the Center for “humanitarian pur-poses.” The scope of definition of humanitarianpurposes is not fully described, but licensees are asked

to agree to negotiate the use of licensed technologiesin good faith. It remains to be seen whether such aposition will (1) be accepted by licensing companies,and (2) increase the flow and applications of newtechnologies to developing countries. We hope thatother academic institutions will reevaluate their IPpolicies and consider how they can best encourage theuse of their intellectual property most effectively forthe benefit of developing countries. Academic institu-tions may wish to consider the following as potentialIP reforms.

• Withhold from license the uses of intellectualproperty in developing economies for what isbroadly claimed as humanitarian purposes.

• Develop licensing strategies for enabling technolo-gies to ensure broad application in the public andprivate sectors.

• Find ways to invent by circumventing the restrictivetechnologies that may be limited by many interna-tional corporations.

• Develop strategies for cooperative research thatfacilitate capacity building.

• Discover research in product development thatbenefits all parties.

• Develop mechanisms that bundle technologies andcan serve the entrepreneurial activities for develop-ing nation partners.

• Establish processes to address queries from devel-oping nation partners: resist driving the agenda,but be in a position to respond positively to thepartners’ agendas.

Final CommentsTime will determine if the research and research

policies at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Centerare or are not successful. At this point, I feel that thereis room for more such institutions. They can free thescientist to conduct innovative, highly cooperativeresearch in a setting that is different from that in theindustrial sector and the academic setting. Such anorganization can require collaborations and partner-ships to encourage innovation and improve productiv-ity of research scientists.

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Chapter 6

Integrating Food Systems in the New Global EconomyElaine R. Wedral

President, Nestlé Research and Development Centers, Inc.

Connecticut, USA

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My invitation to speak at the 2001 GCHERAconference is evidence that the consortium truly looksat our world as one society. I share a common visionwith you, one of building a global community, acommunity of openness between national, economic,and cultural entities. The objective we share is deliver-ing a sustainable, nutritious, and bountiful foodsupply; a food supply that our populations need andwant. I work for Nestlé, the largest food and beveragecompany in the world. With $60 billion in salesworldwide, it is nearly as diverse as this consortium’smembership.

Two years ago my position with Nestlé changeddramatically. For years I supervised the company’sfood and beverage product development for customersin the United States. Today I head one of thecompany’s eight strategic technology centers for ourglobal operations. My entire mission and focus areNestlé customers in the out-of-home environment—ensuring that they receive high-quality food productssafely and cost-effectively.

Effectively, our food systems approach provides theright products to the right customer at the right pricewith added value services to help our operators.

Demographic Demands onDistribution

With this new challenge to integrate our foodsystems comes the clear need to understand the worldand the forces that influence its food systems. Howcan a university best reconfigure itself to accomplishthat?

A cursory glance at changing demographics revealssignificant regional and social imbalances that influ-ence modern food systems. Although predictions forpopulation growth over the last twenty-five years fellshort, the world’s population grew by two billion to6.1 billion people, an impressive increase. By 2025,7.5 billion people may well inhabit the planet.

Even more interesting, however, is the change in theage composition. While the world population group of65 years and older grew by 190 million over the pasttwenty-five years, this age segment is expected tomore than double between the years 2000 and 2025,particularly in industrialized countries, and willrepresent about one third of the world’s population.

The growing demand for basic food in emergingcountries contrasts greatly with the more discriminat-ing demand of the industrialized world for a diet thatis, if anything, too rich. As a result, we in the foodindustry face new social and commercial challenges tointegrate the desire for foods that enhance wellness inan aging population—offering very specialized, highvalue-added products—with the more basic foodsupply needs of rapidly developing nations. And, bythe way, all the while responding in cost-effectiveways.

We in the food industry also must confront newstresses on our global food distribution systemscreated by demographic imbalances from urbanpopulation growth. As an example, 30 percent ofAsians currently live in cities, yet within fifteen years,that percentage could easily grow to 40 or 50 percent.Such growth will drastically alter the food preserva-tion and distribution systems serving these popula-tions; a city of 10 million people can easily consume6,000 tons of food daily. Such growth demandsinfrastructure building and investment and an incred-ible amount of education and knowledge to make wisedecisions.

Product flow, transformation, and distribution willrequire major investments if we must satisfy thechanging demands of an increasingly urbanizedpopulation and make the whole food chain supplymore efficient. The technologies at hand can answerall of these issues. How can we integrate all thatknowledge and make it available and useful?

Local food processing industries do not exist insome parts of the developing world, which means that

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locally grown food cannot be preserved and packagedlocally for sale. In those regions, due to spoilage, onlyabout 25 percent of the local crops actually reachconsumers.

If the ultimate goal is to deliver an adequate and safefood supply to all of our populations, universities,government, and industry must respond by emphasiz-ing food preservation, storage, and safety. Consumersdemand fresh foods, yet, to deliver them fresh, safe,and with a reasonable shelf life, the food industryrequires new technologies, including genetic engineer-ing and telecommunications, and new ways of han-dling. The food industry looks to organizations such asGCHERA to help it address and investigate thesecritical issues.

Globalization’s ProvocationsLiberalization of trade and the competitive nature of

a worldwide, interconnected marketplace have com-pelled large companies like Nestlé Company torestructure their production and delivery systems forgreater efficiency and cost efficiency. Globalizationforces our hand in being more efficient, and thatmakes globalization exciting. But, without a doubt,globalization also shows us weaknesses within theseinterconnected and interdependent relationships.

For example, in early July 2001, we witnessed thevulnerabilities of our interconnected world when signsof an economic slowdown rattled world financialmarkets. This came after two or three key technologi-cally interconnected industries in one nation experi-enced a downturn from investments in 100 millionmiles of cable and networks and about $125 billion tosecure communication networks for telecommunica-tions in the future. Because of our interrelatedness,stock markets in eastern Europe, Turkey, Brazil,Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and just about everywhere inthe world felt this downturn.

We have also seen globalization bring benefitswhere trade, investment, and the movement of peopleand technologies have literally bound nations together.Countries and industries that have promoted suchbehavior have achieved amazing progress and in-creased their GNP tremendously. Countries that haveparticipated in this international trade have moved upthe economic scale more rapidly than those that havenot chosen to trade globally.

Personal income in these countries has also in-creased, driven in part by increases in productivity andeducation, longer working hours, and the growing

numbers of two-income families. This heightenedaffluence has driven a very rapid evolution in con-sumer behavior and preferences toward a dramaticshift from purchasing food that is prepared at home topurchasing food that is prepared and served outsidethe home.

This shift has, consequently, turned purchasingpower away from obtaining basic ingredients for mealpreparation toward partially or completely assembledmeals requiring little or no preparation and, with someproducts, no kitchen.

Perhaps I may illustrate this best with the simpleexample of a birthday cake. Sixty years ago, a motherin the United States would have made her child a cake“from scratch,” using flour, sugar, and eggs. The firstevolution for greater convenience was the introductionof cake mixes. After that came prepared cakes, offereddirectly in grocery stores. Today some economists saywe do not have just a knowledge economy but anexperience economy. They cite parents who go out andpurchase a party package for their child’s birthday, andthe cake is included. A total experience. This increasein affluence and consumerism is not expected to belimited to industrialized countries, since globally wesee higher per-capita GNP figures directly linked toincreased purchases of value-added products.

With such consumer demands and no real increasein food prices, companies experience tremendouspressure to secure cost efficiency. In response, Nestlé,like many large companies, is undertaking newtechnology. We will spend a couple billion dollars on aproject called GLOBE, a program about establishingcommon economic factors and business processesthroughout the world. We are joining with other foodcompanies to share and unify our existing databasesthrough business-to-business initiatives to leverageknowledge and speed the order, delivery, qualitycontrol, invoicing, and economies of scale.

Planning and Public RelationsMissteps

One of the value-added benefits consumers alsowant, if we look at the whole range of products, isimproved health. Again, just as we used telecommuni-cations to improve and reduce costs and speed up oursupply chain, we can use today’s technology toproduce large-scale public health improvementseffectively. In the past, salt and its fortification causedthe virtual disappearance of iodine deficiency, andfluoride treatment in water ameliorated dental health.

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Biotechnology could be an avenue to overcomingVitamin A deficiency, which is so widespread in Asia.Yet, are we ready to implement golden or yellow rice?Are we really prepared to do this?

Some experts have described the development,production, and growth of genetically modified foodsas a critical technology for ensuring a nutritious, safe,and sustainable food supply. Others describe this useof biotechnology as unnatural and a dangerous sciencegone awry. It is reasonable to assume that we all haveresponsibility for this critical impasse—industry,government, and academic groups.

From the start, industry failed to realize how volatilethe perceptions of the new biotechnology were, andopted to go with a strict business plan rather than astrategic plan. The genetically modified crops firsttargeted to the market were engineered to expresstraits that directly benefited agribusiness (pesticide-resistance); only indirectly, through lower environ-mental impact (pesticide production), benefited theconsumer; and appeared to hamper farmers in devel-oping countries (terminator technology).

All three of the first genetically modified applica-tions proved easy targets for an antitechnology faction,and industry made no attempt to adequately inform oreducate consumers on the scientific basis or potentialbenefits of genetic engineering.

In retrospect, it might have been more productive todevelop a more strategic, long-range approach, firstcalling on agribusiness, in partnership with researchuniversities, to conduct an effective and formal “riskassessment” of the new technology; then, widelycommunicating the results for releasing the rightinformation and the right technology at the right time.

After these steps, agribusiness could have intro-duced a crop that provided a clear nutritional benefitunattainable through traditional plant breeding, suchas beta-carotene-enriched “yellow” rice. Hadagribusiness taken such an integrated approach, theglobal consumer might have supported the technologyinstead of fearing it.

These integrated global delivery systems will havethe potential to give the modern consumer unprec-edented access to a highly varied and nutritious foodsupply. If the benefits of biotechnology are to be fullyrealized in the future, scientists and universities mustreengage in dialogue and build a base of understand-ing and trust with the consumer. Just as a lack ofeffective information management can be detrimental,

the selection of the right management tools allows usto navigate our sophisticated information landscape,extracting what we need to increase overall productiv-ity and to meet our global consumers’ changingexpectations. This ability is vital but difficult todevelop. We confront a flood of information, not alack of information.

Today’s world presents many challenges, changes,and questions. How should universities respond tothese changes? Changes, such as smart machinesequipped with artificial intelligence and expert sys-tems with greater memory banks that are becoming thequasi-PhDs of the food industry!

Regardless, humans have an edge—an edge inreasoning and judgment, in addition to critical skillsanalysis. They make connections that machinescannot. Because of this, we must emphasize educa-tional training with more rigorous and challengingmultidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies.

An article I read recently on recruiting explained tobusiness and industry that, to select the best employ-ees to provide the best opportunity for the company’sfuture innovation and success, we cannot continue tohire based on the candidates’ knowledge of thetechnical discipline. We must hire the candidates’minds; i.e., their critical thinking abilities.

The article went on to discuss communication in theworkplace. It stated, “The various constituencieswithin the business enterprise must learn to communi-cate with each other more effectively.” These constitu-encies, especially in international relationships,communicate in different languages. Despite thatreality, finance executives should comprehendMoore’s Law, or marketing specialists should graspthe importance of software in modern gear. Thearticle’s author concluded that business is as much aneducational process as it is a communication process.

Even within the technical community, differentprofessions carry with them prejudice of sorts. Theengineer who derided the Ford physicist’s early use oflasers laughingly accused him of planning to replacethe spark plug. He would later acknowledge that thoselasers were key tools in fostering understanding ofthe combustion process and in improving engineefficiency.

Many corporate executives behave as though theyare in a horse race. Have you felt that pressure? Icertainly have. We must train ourselves to look at an

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Chapter 6

opportunity or challenge as a whole and not focus ourattention very narrowly on a target only a shortdistance away.

The Call to UniversitiesReal innovativeness in an industry requires

broadmindedness—another critical skill to develop.There must be a willingness to see alternate ways ofdoing things, of not necessarily doing them the waywe do them today. Inertia is the greatest enemy ofinnovation. We must seek and encourage alternatemarketplaces and alternate approaches to any givenmarketplace. Corning’s success was due precisely toidentifying new potential markets that could take fulladvantage of the company’s technological prowess.Do our agricultural curriculums stimulate such innova-tive thinking and problem solving?

Agriculture is no longer only concerned withproducing adequate food but also ensuring that, fromthe field to the plate, the food reaches our peoplesafely. Do our university curriculums adequatelyaddress this integrated food chain?

Learning must become a much different and lifelongprocess. Learning skills are critical because we live inan environment where information grows 200,000faster than our population. I read that, to be viable inour information society, the typical adult must take atleast thirty semester hours or credits every ten years.Are our universities organized to manage this growthin adult and postsecondary education? Do you feel thatyou should?

Today we cannot simply produce technology. Ourconsumers have made that clear. We also must prop-erly communicate technology’s value to the globalmarketplace—its benefits and its risks. This is anothervery difficult but critical task.

Are we prepared? How do we prepare our studentsfor this task?

To be successful in the long term, we must rapidlylearn from our mistakes, and we have made some. Wemust be flexible enough to adjust our thinking andgain a genuine understanding of the major forces thatinfluence, shape, and modify our global society.

For a start, universities may choose to work towardintegration and understanding within their many

different departments and disciplines. Such work isvital today because, realistically, in our globaleconomy, integration and interdependence havebecome necessities.

In forming this consortium, GCHERA has taken thefirst step to collaborate, share, and integrate technolo-gies. GCHERA has truly a special opportunity for thepotential you have, together, throughout the world, islimitless.

Chapter 7

A University Action Planfor Servicing the World’s Changing Food Systems

Robert L. Thompson

Director, Rural Development Department, The World Bank

Washington, D.C., USA

39

In high-income nations, the percentage of the popula-tion employed on farms has dropped to low singledigits. Yet, in many of these same nations, workers inthe food sector make up 20 to 25 percent of the totalworkforce. This is understandable only if we recog-nize that the food sector begins in research laborato-ries that spawn the next generations of technology,which progresses their discoveries to input supplyindustries, on to farm production, moving through themarketing and processing sector, then to the wholesaleand retail distribution sectors, which take food prod-ucts to the consumers’ final points of purchase. Isubmit that traditional colleges of agriculture mustaccept as their mission the servicing of future playersin the entire food system, spanning through each linkof this food sector chain.

Changing Nature of the GlobalFood System

Because rapid and unpredictable change character-izes the 21st century, our graduates must be preparedto deal with a changing environment to be successful.Let’s take a closer look at the changing trends so wecan analyze the implications for agricultural collegesand universities and the actions we must take.

Global Demand for FoodToo often in the past, farmers have viewed their job

as growing whatever they were good at growing orwhatever they liked to grow, and it was somebodyelse’s responsibility to pay them for growing it and tomove it along to the public. Today those of us inagriculture must acknowledge that consumers drivethe entire food system, not farmers.

Consumers propel the rapidly growing and changingdemand for food all over the world. At the WorldBank, we project a doubling of world food demand by2050. We expect population to grow about 48 percentfrom the year 2000 to 2050 from 6 billion to 8.9

billion. That estimate is accepting the United Nations’medium projector.

Rather, population growth creates need, or moremouths to feed, but it does not create effective de-mand. Purchasing power creates food demand, andtoday 800 million people go to bed hungry, mainlybecause they lack the purchasing power to access anadequate diet.

Our numbers suggest that there are 1.2 billionpeople in the world who live on less than one dollarper day. Almost half the world’s population lives onless than two dollars per day. But any reasonablesuccess in broad-based economic growth that empow-ers several hundreds of millions of these low-incomepeople with the income and purchasing power toupgrade the quality of their diets will contribute atleast as much to global food demand as to populationgrowth. From this projection, the World Bank con-cluded that the world’s farmers by 2050 must beprepared to grow twice as much food as they do today.

Urbanization, which continues at a very rapid rate,further accentuates changes in diet. From very low tomiddle levels of income, people tend to move up thecarbohydrate chain from roots and tubers to rice towheat. They also increase their consumption of animalprotein, fruits, vegetables, and edible oils. In themiddle- to high-income ranges, they demand moreconvenience and specialized quality characteristics inthe food products they buy. They have the purchasingpower to buy their food produced in any manner theywish, whether it’s organic, free-range, or non-geneti-cally modified because someone is always willing tosupply them. As the opportunity costs of women’stime rises, they also economize on this scarce asset bybuying more convenience products.

Because we expect the demand to continue toincrease—demand for services, packaging, specializedfarm products, and value-added after the farm gate—the percent of the retail food expenditure that farmers

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receive will probably continue to decline as per-capitaincomes rise. Today U.S. farmers receive less than 25percent of the retail price, and similar trends are likelyto surface in most other countries of the world. Withconsumers as the food sector’s royalty, we mustacknowledge that they drive the changes in globalfood demand. And these changes ripple all the wayback to the farm and the input industries.

Public to Private SectorMarketing Systems

The marketing system that links farm productionwith consumers is increasingly focused on whattoday’s consumers want to buy and on ensuring thatthe farm gate hears those demands. Ever-largermarketing firms, created by mergers and acquisitions,accomplish this by increasing vertical integration andcontracting between processors and farmers. Oftenmultinational firms source their inputs in one country,process them in another, and sell them in a third. Someof these multinational corporations have annualturnover significantly larger than the GDPs of many ofthe developing countries in which they operate.

As public sector agricultural marketing firms wereprivatized, the role of the private sector in agriculturalmarketing increased. Privately owned firms werequick to significantly reduce employment levels.

Marketing systems in developing countries, particu-larly as parastatals have been privatized, have notserved small farmers particularly well. One of thegreatest tragedies in this very progressive transforma-tion of state-owned enterprises into private firms isthat today’s marketing institutions often serve smallholders less well than they were served in the past.Markets often work poorly due to high transport costs,lack of telecommunications, and lack of reliableelectric power. It is next to impossible to add muchvalue to the land’s raw products.

At The World Bank we look to the potential role ofagricultural marketing cooperatives in filling this gap.Yet, developing countries are strewn with failedcooperatives. We know that co-ops played an impor-tant role in the agricultural development of northernEurope, North America, and Japan; yet, we must ask,why has the same form of business been less success-ful in serving the agricultural development needs ofmany developing countries among their small holders?

The marketing systems in developing countries arebecoming increasingly linked with those in high-income countries through globalization.

The agricultural marketing system increasingly mustensure the identity of the products that they’re promot-ing, particularly those products that are shipped intohigh-income markets, increasingly so in westernEurope.

Freer InternationalAgricultural Trade

The world’s food and agricultural business is verymuch a global activity today.

Freer international agricultural trade, which is aresult of the Uruguay Round Agreement in agriculture,drives globalization. The percent of the world’sagricultural production that’s moving through interna-tional markets has risen in the last couple of decades,and we expect this to continue. Our research showsthat those parts of the world where we expect fooddemand to grow rapidly are often countries that havevery little land per capita.

We also see a trend to expand international trade tovalue-added and higher-value agricultural products,due, in part, because food processors and supermar-kets promote global sourcing of products.

“Know-how” is extremely important to the level ofcompetitiveness that exporting countries achieve in theinternational market. Knowing how to efficientlyproduce products is key, but they must also exhibit“know-how” in international marketing and “know-how” in meeting product quality standards, includingsanitary and phytosanitary import requirements in themarkets of high-income countries. Again, we see agrowing role for multinational firms in carrying outthis business.

Productivity of FoodProduction

The World Bank’s analysis of world food productionsuggests that to double food production on this planetin the next fifty years, we must initiate a majorincrease in productivity of the land, water, and laborused in food production.

Land Productivity. Increasing land productivityseems an unlikely avenue for success. Only about tenpercent more land is available that is not highlyerodible, subject to desertification, or presentlyforested. We can double the number of hectares undercultivation, but only through unacceptable environ-mental outcomes—massive forest destruction, whichcauses critical losses of wildlife habitat andbiodiversity.

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Water Productivity. Water is likely to become aneven more binding constraint. Agriculture uses 70percent of the water used in the world today. It is thelargest water user and the largest water waster. Tomost of the world’s farmers, water has no cost, andpeople tend to waste any product they perceive as free.With the rapid rate of urbanization, cities will success-fully outcompete agriculture for available water, so theworld’s farmers will strive to double world foodproduction with less available water than they havetoday.

Labor Productivity. The solution that remains fordoubling food supplies by 2050 is doubling theaverage labor productivity on the fertile, nonerodiblesoils now in production. As an extreme case in point, aparticular problem of increasing labor productivityexists in sub-Saharan Africa today because of AIDS. Ivisited a number of villages there where I saw childrenand old people but no one of middle age. The maleand female populations of productive working age aregone because of the AIDS epidemic. In sub-SaharanAfrica, labor saving technologies gain importance as afactor in solving the problem of food security.

Rural Poverty. Labor productivity must also rise soagriculture can contribute to solving the problem ofrural poverty. In every country that has experiencedeconomic growth, the percent of the populationemployed on farms has dropped. Frequently, at lowlevels of economic development, the agriculture sectoris characterized as one of significant poverty, withsignificantly lower incomes than people enjoy in therest of the economy, in part, because of agriculture’slower labor productivity when compared to productiv-ity in other economic sectors. One important aspect ofpoverty reduction in agriculture has been increasingthe average size of farms, driven principally by farmfamilies’ desire to escape poverty.

Moreover, along with the growth of farm size therehas been a tendency toward bifurcation. With a rapidlyshrinking number of farms—farms large enough toprovide the farmers/operators with commercialviability and market rates of return for the families’invested labor and management—comes an increasingnumber of farmers/operators of small-sized farms whoshift to farming part-time. In reality today, a low-income family farm can increase its net family incomeby only a very limited number of approaches. It can:

• increase the amount of land cultivated per person;• grow higher value-per-hectare products on the

family’s existing land;

• increase the productivity with which the familyproduces the products it grows; or

• farm part-time.

Nonfarm Employment. Rural-to-urban migrationhas always been an essential part of the process ofeliminating world poverty. But with the rapid rates ofsuch migration in today’s developing countries, moreand more cities broach an unsustainable size. Creatingnonfarm employment in rural areas is thereforeessential.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that 75percent of the people we count as U.S. farmers todayearn most of their family income from nonagriculturalsources. Indeed, nonfarm employment is a completelynormal part of economic development in agriculture,as evidenced in North America, Europe, and Japan.There, they addressed rural poverty by putting intoplace infrastructure and employment opportunitieswithin commuting distance from farms so that mostsmall holders migrated out of agriculture at 8:00 a.m.and returned at 5:00 p.m., i.e., converting most smallfarms into part-time farms.

Adoption of New TechnologiesWhile the world has plenty of food available today

and at very low cost—real commodity prices are thelowest within the last century—we need a signifi-cantly greater amount of research to ensure a continu-ing flow of new technologies. The world’s farmers inboth high-income and low-income countries need newtechnologies to increase the productivity of land,water, and labor.

Public policy plays a key role in agricultural produc-tion today and in the future. We know that bettertechnology is available today in many developingcountries, but many farmers do not adopt it. It’s ironicthat in the high-income countries, which have such asmall percentage of the population engaged in farm-ing, agriculture is extremely successful in extractingeconomic rents or income transfers from their legisla-tors. While in developing countries, the numericallylarger group of farmers has virtually no political clout,and their governments tax rather than subsidize theagriculture sector. Their governments also make ruralareas less attractive places to live and work becausethey underinvest public funds in rural schools andrural health care, which keeps the rural areas laggingbehind the same nation’s urban areas.

Farmers in developing countries on average paymore than the world market price for their fertilizer,yet receive less than the world market price for their

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outputs. For their situations, they simply do not viewadopting new and improved technologies as profitable.When one adds the pronounced urban bias in publicinvestments, infrastructure, and human capital forma-tion, it’s no surprise that those farmers are laggards inadopting technology.

The high transport costs associated with the miser-able state of rural roads in many developing countriesmake the cost of inputs prohibitive and lowers productvalue. Markets today do not work well in the absenceof telecommunications. We witness a wideninginformation gap between high- and low-incomecountries associated with differential access to theInternet and the World Wide Web. How can ruralfarmers access the Web or the Internet if no telephoneor electric service exists? Without a solution tosluggish infrastructure investments in rural areas,we’ll continue to watch the gap in productivity andcompetitiveness of agriculture widen between thehaves and the have-nots.

Implications and Actions forAgricultural Universities

Agricultural universities all over the world havefound it difficult in recent years to sustain theiroptimal number of students and attract the beststudents. Might this be the result of excessive focus onwhat happens on the farm rather than servicing theneeds of the entire food system or the entire food andagribusiness sector, which includes the farm? We mustassess our curricula to ensure that we are serving theentire food system.

Address FragmentationFrankly, too many colleges of agriculture and

universities operate in this world. Consequently, wefail to capture the economies of scale, i.e., the exces-sive number of graduates relative to the demand,especially in lesser-populated countries or small statesand provinces in heavily populated countries.

Although it often results in suboptimal capacity andduplication of effort in our programs, politically it’soften required to have a college of agriculture. Dis-tance learning can help compensate, but the problemof considerable fragmentation remains.

We must be absolutely certain that our science isimpeccable. It must be objective so criticisms of biasin our research are not forthcoming.

Prepare Skilled StudentsKey people at agricultural universities must also

develop closer relationships with their customers whohire their graduates, so the universities may investigatewhether they give the world the educated workforce itwants and needs. Universities must avoid excessiverigidity in the agricultural curricula because studiesshow that the majority of graduates in agriculture, tenyears after graduation, are working outside their majorsubject area.

We must ensure that agricultural universities arepreparing students for lifelong learning. Obviously,they must be trained for credibility to the first em-ployer who hires them. But because of the extremelyrapid changes in technology, science, and the globalmarketplace, our students must apply and enhancetheir skills as they continue to learn.

They need excellent communication skills. TheWorld Bank actively engages with civil society andnongovernmental organizations whose representativesoften criticize what is taught in the colleges of agricul-ture and national agriculture research systems. Ourgraduates must effectively communicate in writingand speaking if they are to debate those who denigratewhat they learned and what our universities teach inagricultural science.

Integrate Teaching, Research, andExtension Functions

I am very concerned about the situation in agricul-tural teaching, research, and extension in countrieswhere different ministries perform these three func-tions. The U.S. land-grant university model hasdemonstrated the high degree of complementarity thatexists among these three functions. In many develop-ing countries and in many other countries of the world,the research and extension functions, for example, aredivorced from the teaching function.

The World Bank often finds a lack of credibility inthese three functions because, for example, theextension function does not have an adequate researchfoundation to its mission and the research functionemploys inadequate feedback mechanisms thatprevent them from adequately communicating withfarmers. Research results then have no easy way backto the farms. Without extension, the teachers are not atthe cutting edge of what’s going on in the fields. Wemust seek ways to increase this complementarity.

Frequently, the graduates of agricultural universities,particularly in developing countries, lack credibility

43


with the farmers they serve. They simply cannotempathize with the real-world problems of the farmersbecause they have no practical agricultural experienceand do not really understand the challenges of rurallife. One of the strengths of the U.S. land-grantuniversity is the manner in which it pulls childrenraised on farms in rural areas into the universities andturns them into professionals who work in the agricul-tural sciences throughout the industry.

Colleges of agriculture make students better farmers,but few graduates today become farmers. The entirefood system needs people who know what they’retalking about in both the technical sense and thepractical sense. Unfortunately, in many developingcountries, the primary and secondary school systemsare inadequate to prepare many farm-raised childrenwith the necessary skills and knowledge so they passthe entrance examinations required for agriculturaluniversities.

Lobby for Priority FundingWe must serve as watchdogs so that our agricultural

universities do not act in ways that encourages thepublic to perceive us as part of what is called the“ivory tower,” or excessively isolated from the realworld. This drop in credibility has, indeed, occurred ina number of countries, resulting in declining financialsupport. An agricultural university, as well as anagricultural research system, will command publicsupport and public appropriations if, and only if, thepublic perceives it as solving the known problems ofthe nation’s food and agricultural systems.

Avoiding “ivory tower” isolation applies as well topublic agricultural research institutions. Public appro-priations have declined severely in some of thecountries of eastern and central Europe, as well as inmany developing countries when their agriculturalresearch institutions appear too oriented toward peerresearch. The public wants such institutions to solvefarmers’ real world problems and engage in dialoguewith farmers, who communicate with researchers, whoreport their findings to agricultural colleges.

While public investment in agricultural researchhas declined significantly, we record an increase inprivate sector investments in the world’s high-incomecountries. In part, this trend is due to provisions ofintellectual property protection through patenting ofbiological materials. Companies that developed suchtechnologies during the past few decades have enjoyedmore protection than companies’ mechanical inven-tions of the century before.

The private sector will only make investments inagricultural research if it can gain a return and recoverthe investment costs, as it provides a return to itsshareholders. Some activists in nongovernmentalorganizations have criticized the private sector for thisrationale, but they simply cannot have it both ways. Ifthe U.S. Congress and the parliaments of manyEuropean countries have reduced public investmentsin agricultural research and turned it over to theprivate sector, while they enacted patent laws thatprotect intellectual property, what other outcomeshould we expect?

Rather, may the activists invest as much of theircommunications budget in lobbying to support higherappropriations for agricultural research. I too believein the “public good” nature of agricultural research. Ibelieve that consumers and farmers benefit signifi-cantly from public investments in research thatgenerate freely available technologies. If we’re notgoing to invest public resources in that research, it isinevitable that the inputs we buy in the body of thoseimproved technologies must be priced higher torecover research costs.

In developing countries, the challenge is evengreater. Investments in agricultural research there havealso been declining, but the private sector has notstepped in to fill the gap. Simply no available marketrate of return on investment, which would be payablein foreign exchange, exists to create an attractiveprospect for private sector firms. To have a continuinginvestment in the public support for agriculturalresearch is even more important to developing coun-tries than it is to high-income countries.

Investments have also declined because foreignassistance, foreign aid, or official developmentassistance in agricultural research has been cut. TheWorld Bank has declined significantly in grantingloans in support of rural development in agriculture.Last year’s lending figures were the lowest in thehistory of The Bank. Surprisingly, these lower figuresare not from The Bank’s desires to cut back loans, orbecause we’ve decentralized and become moredemand driven. The developing countries frankly havenot demanded as much for agricultural research oragriculture development as they have in years past.

The Bank believes that there are several reasons forthe decline in borrowing in support of agriculturedevelopment, including agricultural research. Thesereasons are, first, low commodity prices and, second,the lack of political clout of farmers in developingcountries. And, third, agricultural development is a

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long-term investment, and our political bosses in manydeveloping countries are demanding shorter andshorter payoffs or quick fixes, partly because of theirurban bias. Partly, we fight the perception that agricul-ture is old, boring, and passé. Legislators preferinvestments in exciting high-profile areas, such asdisease control or population control. And finally, theministries of finance with whom The World Bankinterfaces are simply not telling us that agriculture is apriority.

Somehow we must regain agriculture’s position onthe global agenda. The World Bank has more re-sources available to lend for agricultural and ruraldevelopment than in demand. If developing countriesrequest funds, the monies can help strengthen instruc-tion in colleges of agriculture, strengthen agriculturalresearch, or strengthen extension services. But, torebuild demand from The World Bank and fromofficial development assistance donors, significantchange in the political realities of nations—low-income and high-income—must occur.

Lester Brown, Thomas Malthus, and the Club ofRome have all been wrong over the last 100 or 200years in their forecasts of doom. The reason they’veall been wrong is they assumed static technology. Ibelieve deeply in the public good of agriculturalresearch, education, and technology transfer, but wemust develop greater political support for theseactivities or we’re not likely to achieve it.

Supply has significantly outstripped demand inagriculture. Supply is one reason why we have thelowest real commodity prices of the last century. Wemust make investments in agricultural research toproduce tomorrow’s technologies, which colleges ofagriculture will transfer to their students and ulti-mately to the professionals who conduct research, andthe professionals and the universities will diffuse newtechnologies to the farmers through extension.

In the 21st century, agricultural production hasbecome a process of applying science in developingand managing technology and informing and trainingfarmers in these processes. Relatively low levels ofliteracy among most farmers in developing nationspresent complex challenges to their higher educationinstitutions that offer an agricultural curriculum. Withworld population estimated to reach ten to elevenbillion by 2050 and such growth expected primarilyin the developing world, farmers there must knowand apply more efficient methods to increase foodproduction.

The instructional methods that higher agriculturaleducation use generally involve soon-to-be farmers inthe decision making processes of developing technol-ogy, choosing technologies and treatments, imple-menting projects, and sustaining project gains. If farmgraduates do not use, apply, or manage these "state ofart" technologies properly, problems, sometimes evenirreversible ones, may arise, which may lead tostagnation in production or even declines.

Experience shows that technological solutions areexternal to the local environment, often creatingadaptation problems. The agricultural curriculum, inthe developing world's higher education institutions,requires a strong feed-back mechanism within thetransfer of technology chain to quickly recognize andresolve such problems. Another dimension it mustcontain is the globalization process, which presentsstiff competition of world trade. Globalization impartslarger obstacles for nations with limited capacity andmeans to help their farmers respond to market forces.

Moreover, the curriculum must train students inmanaging trade and agricultural commodities inven-tory, a specialized operation that requires assessingdifferent regions' demand-supply positions, as well ascreating and managing infrastructure for storage andtransportation facilities. It must teach its farmersmethods and strategies to increase production effi-ciently while protecting the environment.

Chapter 8

Revising India’s Agricultural CurriculumS. Kannaiyan

Vice-Chancellor, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University

India

Higher education institutions in developing coun-tries must add continuing education to their formal,rigid agricultural curriculum. Continuing educationmust address the needs of illiterate, unskilled farmersand farm households. Such a curriculum would giveindividual farmers access to agricultural facilities atdifferent stages of their lives. It would also relate theeducational process more directly to local conditions,making learning more meaningful. Serving officials inthe Private and Public Agricultural Extension Systemsand Corporate sector will also benefit agriculturalproduction.

India's AgriculturalCurriculum

Agricultural education has played a very importantrole in India's socioeconomic development. Agricul-ture in India supports more than 60 percent of itspopulation and 80 percent of its poor. The agricultureindustry contributes close to 30 percent of the nations’gross domestic product and generates about 20 percentof India's export earnings.

The History of AgriculturalEducation in India

Historical evidence reveals that agricultural educa-tion existed in the monastic Nalanda University andTakshila University during India's medieval period.However, only after six agricultural colleges wereestablished at Kanpur, Lyalpur, Coimbatore andNagpur in 1906, Pune in 1907, and Sabour (Bihar) in1908 were students offered organized courses inagricultural education (Paroda, 1999).

At the time of independence in 1947, India had 17colleges that offered courses in agriculture and alliedsciences. Soon after independence, the Government ofIndia appointed a University Education Commission(Dr. R. Radhakrishnan, Chair) to review higheragricultural education to suggest ways to increase

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food-grain production. The commission recommendedthat India make agricultural education a major nationalpriority (Paroda, 2000).

In 1955 the United States offered its assistance. Thefirst Indo-American team studied India's agriculturalresearch and education and recommended strengthen-ing higher agricultural education and adding veteri-nary education to the curriculum. It further recom-mended that the U.S. governments' substantial grants-in-aid subsidize the development of rural universitiesin India. The first university of its kind opened inPantnagar, Uttar Pradesh state of India in 1960. Bythe late 1950s, the Indian Council of AgriculturalResearch (ICAR) had undertaken an assessment of theuniversity courses and formulated a model curriculum.

In 1964 an agricultural education committee (Dr.Ralph W. Cummings, Chair) (Jain, 1999) recom-mended establishing universities in six states of India,based on the U.S. land-grant college system. Each hada strong curriculum in agriculture, animal science andallied sciences. Today India has 32 agriculturaluniversities in its higher education system.

The Status of India's AgriculturalEducation System

India's state agricultural universities (SAUs) andother important institutes of agricultural educationhave embarked on an ambitious program of develop-ing a suitable agricultural education system both at theundergraduate and postgraduate levels. They havereviewed the agricultural education system and thelessons learned over the years have been at the heart ofthese reforms.

The program began with setting goals to preparegraduates so they would become job providers ratherthan job seekers. Another priority was training thefaculty members in agricultural education to updatetheir mind-set about instruction and train them inmodern teaching, research, and extension approaches.

Although, India owns one of the world's largestsystems of agricultural education, until recently, theSAUs' agricultural programs were not effectivelyaccredited, resulting in lack of uniformity, low stan-dards, poor quality of education, an absence of modernteaching techniques, a wide variation in examinationand evaluation systems, lack of staff mobility, andpoor student mobility among universities and states.

Many SAUs also lack modern management systems,they have poor library resources and poor teachingfacilities. The system urgently needed a well-definedregulatory mechanism, human resource development

and human resource management programs, a reorga-nization of support systems and strategies to rejuve-nate the entire agricultural education network.

Traditional Curricular OrientationIndia's agricultural education system is entrenched

in traditional ways of crop production with very littleattention paid to value addition, e.g., storage, coldstorage, transportation, and processing. Similarly, thesystem lacks emphasis on market research, demandprojections, exploring markets, export potential, andproduction technologies.

The current system works within the paradigm oftransfer of technology from the scientists to theextension officer to the farmer. It emphasizes acquir-ing knowledge, creating awareness, and disseminatingnew technologies through extension and communica-tion techniques, with weak efforts at upgrading skills.The system has been slow to create a cadre of agricul-tural professionals who provide technical and profes-sional services, such as diagnostic services for plantand soil health, farm management services and whoenhance farmers' technical and entrepreneurial skillsso they may make more informed decisions about theirpractices.

Almost all the states and provinces have recentlyrecorded dramatic reduction in the absorption rates ofagricultural graduates in government service. Thissignals higher education that graduates must gainknowledge and learn skills applicable to the privatesector, in addition to the knowledge and skills requiredfor self-employment. Because students enter agricul-tural education based on the field's employmentopportunities, India's agricultural education systemmust undertake a continuous workforce study andworkforce assessment concerning market needs as itdevelops and reforms its agricultural curricula.

Curricular InnovationsIndia's agricultural education curriculum must

become more skill oriented, interweaving qualityassurance throughout its curricular processes. In thisway, graduates are more likely to satisfy the currentmarket demands with their high degrees of capabilityin handling modern-day management systems. More-over, graduates' expertise, in the course of time, willenable the agriculture sector to harness and useresources and other inputs efficiently, thereby convert-ing the dimension of comparative advantage intocompetitive advantage through quality improvementand cost minimization. In recent years, higher educa-tion has introduced some curricular advances toachieve these goals.

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In 1995 the Indian Council of Agricultural Researchlaunched an innovative project for Agricultural HumanResource Development with the World Bank's finan-cial support. (World Bank, 1995). The project'smission has been (1) to improve the quality andrelevance of higher education in agriculture, and (2) tostrengthen the capacity of participating states todevelop and manage their agricultural human re-sources. Significant achievements of the project'sphase one include the following:

• the creation of an Accreditation Board to establishnorms and standards for higher agriculturaleducation;

• uniform academic regulation;• examination and evaluation systems for the SAUs;• revision of the undergraduate course curriculum

(see Table 1);• improvement of faculty competence;• provision of sabbatical rules;• reduced inbreeding through the allocation of 15

percent and 25 percent seats at the undergraduateand postgraduate levels, respectively in all SAUsfor students from other states;

• selection of assistant professors through theNational Eligibility Test (NET);

• awarding scholarships to those students willing tomove out of their home states; and the

• creation of databases for workforce needs.

Encouraged by the project's success, ICAR ispreparing to initiate the project's Phase 2, which wouldcover all the states and the SAUs.

India's AgriculturalCurriculum

To prepare for agriculture's diversification, valueaddition, and globalization, higher education in Indiamust strengthen its agricultural programs in thoseareas and disciplines to improve the quality of educa-tion and to achieve excellence in student performanceafter graduation.

Multiple Needs for ReformTo expose students to such current issues as post

harvest and storage technology and problems inmarketing agricultural produce, for example, it wasnecessary to revamp the undergraduate agriculturaleducation, making sound this all-important curricularfoundation.

Globalization urges higher education to develop along-term strategy to modify the educational system tocontinuously be a viable player in the highly talented

and competitive international market (Mukhopadhyay,1997).

Changes in the Agriculture IndustryThe changes in the agricultural industry signal the

need for changes in the agricultural profession, which,in turn, present a need for higher agricultural educa-tion to prepare graduates in new and innovative ways.The changes in the industry and the profession (Gov-ernment of Tamil Nadu, 1999) are shown in Table 1.

Chances in Higher EducationTo provide the profession with technologically

savvy, business minded, well-rounded graduates,higher education institutions have gradually shiftedfrom being agents of the government who dischargetraditional educational functions as a social service tobecoming key players in the knowledge industry withdirect social responsibilities. The dimensions of highereducation that have transformed to 21st centurydemands are shown in Table 2 (Government of TamilNadu, 1999).

Table 1. The Changing Agricultural Scenario

Past Present and Future

Controlled market Era of increasing productionLiberalized market Era of productivity and

sustainability

Striving for self Striving for trade andsufficiency income generationIndividual farming Corporate and cooperative

farming

Operating at local level Operating at national andinternational level

Majority employer is the Majority employers aregovernment private sector companies and

nongovernmental organizations

Government actively Government facilitatesparticipates in agricultural agricultural progressactivities

Demand for farm Demand for job opportunitiesgraduates

Emphasis of ag education Emphasis of ag education isis on extension self-employment

Introduction of more Consolidation of coursesdegree programs and degree programs

Education provides Education creates an all aroundtechnical knowledge on agricultural professionalagriculture

Need for agricultural Need for agricultural managersscientists

Low career mobility and Increased career optionsoptions

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Inherent ProblemsIn addition to macro-level changes, agricultural

education faces a range of problems at the micro level,which are listed below.

1. Narrow range of skills. Graduates who aretrained in a limited range of skills cannot meet marketdemands.

2. Unemployment and underemployment ofgraduates. Agricultural institutions must reorient thecurriculum to produce graduates who bring relevantskills to the market.

3. Students with urban background. About 70percent of the students in India's agricultural universi-ties are from urban areas. Such students not only lackprior exposure to field conditions but are often notwilling to work in rural areas.

4. Inadequate program flexibility and diversity.Agricultural universities must move from beingpassive participants in the national and internationalmarkets to active trendsetters.

5. Brain drain. Increasingly, agricultural graduatesare employed in non-agricultural sectors because offew employment opportunities in agriculture. Thisdiminishes the investment in these graduates' trainingand represents a loss of workforce to the sector.

In addition, adequate and appropriate infrastructuralfacilities are essential to attain international standards.Developing an excellent network to facilitate interac-tion among the various stakeholders is crucial for theuniversity to understand the market needs and de-mand.

The curriculum review process should be rigorousand systematic, with clear visualization of the goalsand values in mind. While formulating the syllabi,ICAR took care to ensure that the resultant curriculumcan produce graduates with the knowledge-skill-attitude profile, shown in Table 3 (Government ofTamil Nadu, 1999).

Knowledge Skill Attitude

Agriculture/education Entrepreneurial Interest inas a science skills agriculture

profession

Resources required for Communication Willingness toagriculture & its skills work in ruralmanagement areas

Technological aspects of Leadership skills Ambition to takeagriculture up agriculture/vet

farming

Production and protection Interpersonal Self-reliance andaspects of agriculture skills self-confidence

Integration of agriculture Management Systems thinkingwith related sciences skills & analytical

approach

Environmental aspects Technical skills Information-and wasteland seekingmanagement

Advanced technology Project Competitiveand advanced applied management spiritscience skills

Knowledge on Organizing skills Adaptive spiritinternational as well Resourceas local agriculture management Proactive and

skills positive

System Dimensions Present Future

Institutional Nature Traditional Characteristicspattern of of knowledgeeducation industry

Mode of Education Formal Informal; networked

Funding Source Single Multiple sources

Academic Orientation Disciplinary Inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary

Stakeholders’ Influence Students, faculty, Employers,staff, and community ofgovernment users

Curriculum Rigid procedures; Dynamic process;Development Sole responsibility Participation of

of the academic all the majorcommunity stakeholders

Accountability Government and Market/clientother regulatory accountability;bodies Customer

orientation

Institutional Culture Static and Change oriented;adherence to flexibilityestablished norms emphasisand procedures

Alliances Individual Severalinstitutional collaborativeoperations with alliancesvery limited with a varietyalliances of institutions in

the country and abroad

Table 2. Paradigm Shifts in Higher Education Table 3. Profile of Agricultural Graduates

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India's Revised AgriculturalCurriculum

The revised undergraduate curriculum, shown in thefollowing list, displays a thorough agricultural man-agement thrust. It includes content in courses aboutinformation technology and decision support systems,irrigation methods and management, quality cropproduction methods, sensible mechanization, andwasteland utilization. Students learn about fieldconsultancy in technology transfer and project formu-lation. They study farmers' organizations and howtheir membership enhances bargaining power. Othercourse content includes transgenic plants, new seedsand nursery technology, precision farming, protectedagriculture, and horticulture.

Curriculum Content RevisionsThe revised course curricula accommodates in the

new content, areas of agribusiness, export, diversifica-tion of agriculture, integrated pest management,integrated nutrient management, biodiversity, environ-mental science, biotechnology, geographical informa-tion systems, computer applications, biostatistics, andintellectual property rights. It also added specializedcourses in agriexport business, quality control, valueaddition and product development, market trends andintelligence, world trade agreements, trade-relatedintellectual property rights, global convention onclimate, biodiversity, and diversification.

Three areas addressed in the curriculum revision areparticularly pertinent to India's unique needs. They arebiotechnology, the environment, and sustainability.

Biotechnology. Biotechnology offers enormousbenefits to the Third World, especially in solving theproblems of poverty, hunger, disease, environmentaldestruction, and natural resources development.Biotechnology is more relevant to a country similar toIndia than to the industrialized nations of the west.India has no dearth of priorities—the tremendouspressure of its rising population, poor sanitation anddrinking water, the premium on cultivatable land, thevagaries of the monsoon, fuel shortage, and forestdevastation. Hence, training students and generating askilled scientific workforce in the biotechnology fieldare imminent.

Environment. The previous agricultural curriculumpaid minor attention to global environmental problemsand negligible attention to local conditions. Additionof environment to the curriculum has become vitallyimportant in building rural, rural-urban and urbannetworks.

The revised curriculum promotes student under-standing of local cultures and their effects on thenatural environment. Students research how natureand culture interact and how these interactions havecreated local landscapes. It is hoped that this curricu-lum design will develop graduates whom farmers indeveloping nations will find more acceptable inextension training venues.

Sustainability. The concept of sustainable develop-ment encompasses not only environment but alsopoverty, population, health, food security, democracy,human rights, and peace; all critical issues in develop-ing nations.

Agribusiness ManagementAgroindustriesBiodiversityBioenergyBiofertilizersBioinformaticsBiopesticidesBioresources TechnologyBiotechnologyCommercial AgricultureContract FarmingEnvironmental SciencesExperiencial LearningFood ProcessingFood TechnologyHigh-Tech HorticultureHybrid Rice ProductionInformation Technology and CommunicationIntegrated Nutrient ManagementIntegrated Pest ManagementIntellectual Property RightsMarketingMechanizationNatural Resource ManagementNew Computer ApplicationsNew Food Product DevelopmentOrganic FarmingPlant Genetic ResourcesPost-harvest TechnologyPrecision FarmingProtected HorticultureRural Agricultural Work ExperienceSustainable FarmingTissue CultureValue AdditionWater Management and Water Use Efficiency

Table 4. Revised Agricultural CurriculumRequirements for Undergraduates

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Sustainability is, in the final analysis, a moral andethical imperative, in which cultural diversity andtraditional knowledge must be respected.

All content areas, including the humanities and thesocial sciences, must be involved in addressing issuesrelated to environment and sustainable development.Addressing sustainability requires a holistic, interdis-ciplinary approach that brings together the differentdisciplines and institutions while retaining theirdistinct identities.

The revision process considered local, regional, andnational contexts of sustainable development. Byintroducing field experience into university classroomteaching, ICAR hopes such development will receivegreater attention in the future.

Pedagogical and AdministrativeReforms

To compete in today's market, the agriculturalhuman resource must be self-motivated, be solidlyprofessional in his or her practices, display a strongwork ethic and attitude, and demonstrate adequate,technical business-communication, computer applica-tion, and management skills. Generating graduateswith such traits and skills is at the heart of the curricu-lum revision process. The hope is that the SAUs will,in time, provide the agriculture industry with a compe-tent breed of technology agents, who become jobcreators, ultimately strengthening the industry and thenation.

The higher education administration and faculty willimplement the revised curriculum through the follow-ing approaches:

• faculty development,• industry-institution linkages,• interinstitutional collaboration at national and

international levels,• resource mobilization and utilization,• rural work experience,• distance learning,• modular courses for skill and entrepreneurial

development, and• accreditation at national level and cross-country

accreditation for continuous improvement in qualityof education.

Rural Agricultural Work Experience. Experientiallearning in agricultural education largely helps gradu-ates who will seek self-employment in commercialagricultural regions. It also helps to produce, highlycompetent and well-trained students who have devel-

oped technical skills and managerial capability that theagriculture sector requires and needs (Macadam andPackham, 1989; Bawden, 1978; Bawden andPackham, 1991; Kannaiyan, 1999. )

The major objectives of the revised curriculum'sRural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE) are:• to develop self confidence among students

(Kannaiyan, 1998);• to develop an insight into the availability of local

resources;• to gain practical experience in farm operations;• to find out the existing indigenous knowledge of

practicing farmers and its significance to thetechnological generation of new agriculturalgraduates;

• to study the local market network for planningagricultural production;

• to study leadership in action and its role in agricul-ture and rural development;

• to collect information about the potentialities andprospects of agro-industries;

• to study village-level functions, its organizationalstructure and the responsibilities of differentdepartments;

• to study the attitudes of farmers about adoptingnewer crop production technologies;

• to collect information on various constraints to thefarmers; and

• to study the structure and functions of regionalresearch stations and their roles in solving regionalproblems.

Scientists and project leaders of various researchprojects brief RAWE students on the latest technolo-gies and location-based scientific knowledge. Thisexposure to location-specific research helps studentsto observe and ask questions so they learn more fromthe field experience. Students travel to a particularvillage and stay with one family with a tiny farm andone family with a small farm, and one family with alarge farm through the RAWE session.

Distance Learning. This century's new informationtechnology has liberalized and liberated the learningprocess (Abdul Kareem, 1999). Open learning offersflexibility in admissions, learning methods, coursecontent, examinations, and even evaluation (RangaRao, 1999). Further, the audiovisual elements ofdistance learning ensure greater uniformity in teachingquality. Finally, distance learning circumvents theproblems of time and space for learners.

This form of learning has immediate applications inextension education for technical officers in agricul-

51


ture, horticulture, agricultural engineering, and ruralhome science. It also breaks down the barriers thatexist between stages of education—primary, second-ary, tertiary, and higher education.

Entrepreneurship Development. Some importantentrepreneurial characteristics that graduates who optfor self-employment must develop are the need forachievement, greater intrinsic motivation and rein-forcement, self-reliance, and independence. Theagricultural curriculum promotes entrepreneurialdevelopment by encouraging students' creative andinnovative response to the environment (Kannaiyan etal, 1999). Some entrepreneurial activities geared forgraduates are:

• Biofertilizers and biopesticides production and sales• Consultancy• Landscaping• Mushroom production• Nursery management• Ornamental gardening• Seed production, processing and sales• Sericulture• Waste recycling for value-added products• Waste utilization, such as composting

Accreditation. Quality assurance and institutionaland program improvement are the two main purposesof accreditation. Institutions may seek accreditationfor the institution as a whole or for specific programsor departments within the institution. All over theworld, various national and state agencies conductaccreditation as a regulatory process. However,voluntary accreditation of educational institutions, ascarried out by various accrediting bodies is a uniquelyAmerican process.

In India the concept of assuring quality in highereducation is relatively new. Past concerns aboutstandards have now shifted to quality. Several nationalorganizations are already functioning in relation toassessment and accreditation of institutions of highereducation. For example, the National Board of Ac-creditation of All India Council of Technical Educa-tion is a statutory body that deals with such profes-sional disciplines as engineering, management, andpharmacy studies. Another organization, establishedby the University Grants Commission, is the autono-mous National Assessment and Accreditation Council,enforces the mandate to judge and assure quality inliberal arts, sciences, and other disciplines. Similarly,the Veterinary Council of India looks after the accredi-tation of Veterinary Education.

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research createdan Accreditation Board, which plays a key role in

maintaining the norms and standards of agriculturaleducation (Padda and Maurya, 1999; Kannaiyan,1999). The ICAR developed a self-study reportmechanism, which it suggested to agricultural univer-sities. The participating SAUs report relevant curriculain agriculture and allied sciences based on the needsand requirements of the students. They also reportways they attain excellence in education and waysthey produce highly competitive, vibrant agriculturegraduates and technocrats.

A Call for Ongoing CurriculumReform

For India's agricultural production to grow and meetthe consumption demands of its growing populationand to exploit any and all export possibilities, theagriculture sector must make certain key policydecisions and adopt innovative approaches andstrategies in the years to come.

The roles of the agricultural universities and thenational agricultural education systems must becomemore pronounced and they must become more ac-countable for (1) producing skilled graduates, andtrained extension personnel, and (2) guiding govern-mental agencies in their policy making processes.

India’s Future RealitiesOngoing reform of the agricultural education

syllabus must address all of the following eventuali-ties, which India will soon witness:

Agriculture will become knowledge based and apartfrom traditional farmers, corporate entities andagriculture professionals will take up modern, scien-tific farming.

Demands will increase for enabling such services asinformation on weather, pests, cost-effective nutrientand irrigation management and global demand andprice information for different commodities.

Demand will increase for facilities such as scientificstorage of all kinds of diverse agricultural commodi-ties, safe transport of these and market infrastructure.

Trained scientists and a skilled work force willcompete globally.

If new technologies are to become acceptable topracticing farmers in the shortest possible time,extension approaches must involve widespread farmerparticipation in technology development and adoptionstrategies.

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Chapter 8

Services of non-governmental agencies will grow,apart from the public extension agencies, state agricul-tural universities, and farmers' science and trainingcenters.

Globalization of agriculture will put pressure onland use decisions and ultimately the commodity mix.

India’s Imminent Demands of theAgriculture Industry

As a result of these future realities, this developingnation will call upon the agriculture sector for solu-tions:

Implement a clear objective and a detailed strategyto increase food-grain production, first, intensely infavored areas, to meet the basic food demands ofIndia's rising population.

Diversify agricultural production in less-favoredareas, first, by developing these degraded lands andlater, by planting semi-irrigated seasonal, annual, orperennial crops to effectively manage the availablemoisture-irrigation-water potential.

Augment and strengthen efforts on resource conser-vation and proper utilization through the latest tech-nologies.

Generate and adopt technologies harmonious withthe environment and manage by judicious combinationof local and traditional technologies with moderntechnologies, such as chemical fertilizers and pesti-cides, biological fertilizers and pesticides, irrigationwater, and biotechnology.

Implement natural resource management programs,such as watershed development, especially in erosion-prone areas.

Strengthen production, conservation and eco-restoration forest development activities.

Resultant Policy RecommendationsHigher education institutions that offer agricultural

curricula are advised to establish an ongoing evalua-tion of their programs to match current market de-mands and progress.

Continue curricular emphasis on agriculture man-agement for quality agri-businesses.

Build the value system in students to respect practic-ing farmers who have low or moderate levels ofeducation and tend deteriorating resources, yet mustmeet the challenges of dealing with such diverseinstitutions as industry, finance, and co-operatives.

Support hands-on training, which generates greaterconfidence within students for accepting positions inthe corporate sector or for self-employment.

Support experiential learning as the first step inpersonality development and values development inagricultural students.

Strengthen the education system by asking stake-holders for feedback (1) on the capabilities of thegraduates the universities have produced and, (2) onthe sector's changing needs that may instruct furthercurricular reform.

Devise a periodic mechanism for a strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats (SWOT) analysis toenable the system to adjust for changes.

Provide in-service training for faculty to encouragecapacity building.

Routinely investigate infrastructure needs to acquirethe latest equipment and instruments for effectiveteaching and learning.

Modernize the library systems with computernetworks.

Build accountability into system processes at alllevels.

Examine cross-country accreditation to makegraduates internationally mobile (Harish Kumar, 1977;Kannaiyan, 1999; Chandrasekaran, 1999) .

Continuously modify the methodology of commer-cial agricultural courses to make them parallel with therealities of the emerging modern scenario.

Add course modules that prepare students to writeviable project proposals for setting up any entrepre-neurial ventures and for seeking funding from finan-cial institutions.

In summary, curriculum development is a continu-ous process that must consider the learning needs ofthe present-day generation of students. Becauselearning is a lifelong process, a training extensioncurriculum must also attend to the needs of thepractitioner in the field. Agricultural education cur-ricula must address the here and now of the agricultureindustry on the local, national, and internationalsmarkets in this 21st century.

53


AcknowledgementThe author is thankful to the Indian Council of

Agricultural Research, New Delhi, for its full supportof improving the quality of the Agricultural Curricu-lum at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University by con-ducting new initiatives. The author is grateful to Dr. R.S. Paroda, Director General, ICAR, New Delhi, andDr. S. L. Mehta, Former Deputy Director General(Education), ICAR, New Delhi. He also appreciatesthe financial support from ICAR, World Bank, FordFoundation, and the Tamil Nadu Government. Theauthor gratefully acknowledges the travel grantprovided by the Global Consortium of Higher Educa-tion and Research for Agriculture so he could presentthis paper at the International Conference on HigherEducation and Research for Agriculture and FoodSystems in the 21st Century at San Francisco, Califor-nia, USA, during July 2001.

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