Dear Faculty and Staff….the Prescience column this month is reprinted from a piece I wrote for the MU International program’s newsletter. See their website at
www.missouri.edu/~icweb/

CAFNR has long been a leader on this campus in research and outreach worldwide. After recent visits to a couple of our international sites, and to Washington, D.C., to both the State Department and the Agency for International Development, it is clear that agriculture, food systems, and natural resource management are as important as ever to global relationships. 

Hats off to all our faculty and staff who are contributing, and also to bringing CAFNR, MU, and Missouri agricultural products and expertise to the world.

Regards, John

For more information on the issues addressed in this column, see:

• CGIAR’s website on international research centers: www.cgiar.org/

• US AID’s website: www.usaid.gov/

To paraphrase the recent best-seller which accounts for the history of civilization in a paperback volume (Guns, Germs, and Steel), agriculture was/is a precursor to complex societal development around the globe. Even today, a time when extraordinary resources such as oil or nuclear weapons can propel a nation into global significance, we continually relearn that a society is no stronger than its ability to plan, execute, and sustain a food and natural resources system. This partly explains why agriculture has been an important component of the international research efforts here at Mizzou, as well as at most other land grant universities across the country.

Global issues blossomed in the 1960s and 70s, and U.S. led agricultural research teams took on the issues of famine and improved management of soils, plants, and animals. The United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the United Nations Environment Program established a network of 16 international agricultural research centers in 1971. Collectively coined CGIAR (The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) these centers still exist today, and focus on increasing productivity, protecting the environment, saving biodiversity, improving policies, and strengthening national research around the globe.

MU has regular interactions with many of these centers which includes research on corn (or maize), soybean, rice, wheat, forest species, and several kinds of livestock. The improvement of global crop productivity, now known as the ‘green revolution’, was largely an outcome of CGIAR and U.S. land grant university collaboration, such as here at MU. Beyond the natural sciences, MU has also been active in helping research and develop national food policy and trade relations, as well as study individual rural community development and governance.

In reflecting on our international research portfolio today, one can’t help but be struck by the evolution of orientation and expectations. Last month our college took a small team to South Korea to further establish Asian connections in developing global soybean genomics research. Asia certainly represents important access to germplasm (the center of origin for this particular species), but we also found sophisticated science and colleagues.

Perhaps we were the bio ‘prospectors’ of yesterday in such global research programs, but today it’s a global science and the language of intellectual property rights have replaced that of requesting permission for exporting seeds. In fact, in a project currently underway between MU and South Africa, the purpose is to co-develop indigenous species there, and for use in the local practice of human health management. Another contemporary twist on international research is MU’s work on GMO (genetically modified organism) policy and trade with the European Union. One of our agricultural economists’s delivered just last month a major address to the EU that revealed the costs, benefits, and financial motivations for regulatory policies around the world. All a far cry from the early days of international research topics and purposes.

Another important aspect requiring an international network of agricultural researchers is that of ‘globalization’ of plant, animal, and human health. Foot and mouth disease, mad cow disease, SARS – these are all terms in the vocabulary of a populous world-wide. The ease and prevalence of global travel has brought with it the need to develop a science and understanding of trading disease and illness as well. MU faculty are participants the emerging national network of both plant and animal disease diagnosticians. And, the next step is hooking this national network to like networks around the globe to help track and manage global health threats.

In sum, fighting famine has largely been replaced by the objectives of economic development and nation-building among international research efforts. Inspection of the U.S. Agency for International Development website today quickly reveals the focus and intent to use our science to help develop the world and create stable democracies. And, any look at our current international research activity would concur. Though agriculture is only part of the total MU listing of international research efforts, it remains both historically important, and even today, the very first step in bringing on the economists, the sociologists, the philosophers, and the artisans. We in agricultural research are both pleased and humbled by this necessary role.