Ed Price (left) and Mohammed Ma'ad, an assistant research scientist with the International Agriculture program, during a trip to Iraq.
International agriculture at Texas A&M University dates to 1898. Here, Ed Price, associate vice chancellor for agriculture, discusses how International Agriculture is making a difference in 105 countries.
How did you get involved with the International Agriculture program?
It’s a long story that began on our farm in North Alabama. I dreamed of working in another country. I listened to the record album, “South Pacific.” And though I never saw the movie until much later in life, I imagined the islands.
When Kennedy was elected President I was a freshman in college, but wrote immediately asking to join the Peace Corps. I was accepted before the end of my sophomore year (physics major) at Emory, and went to the British colony of Sarawak at age 19 as a volunteer—and never looked back. I have been in international agriculture throughout college and career.
Has Texas A&M always had a strong international agriculture emphasis, or is this a relatively recent development?
I date the beginning of international agriculture at Texas A&M to 1898, when a Seaman Knapp went to Asia to collect rice varieties to try in Texas. It was a great success story that led to the establishment of the Texas and U.S. Cooperative Extension Service. I don’t know of any direct connection that he might have had with Texas A&M, but his work definitely fed into what we were doing then and are doing today.
The other early leader was the founder of the Texas A&M veterinary school. Dr. Mark Francis worked on cattle tick fever, one of the causes of range wars in the Southwest. He cooperated with Mexican scientists to find the cause and remedy for the fever, at one time installing cattle dipping vats where the Williams Administration Building is located today.
But international agriculture at Texas A&M has had its ups and downs. The glory days were in the 1960s when Texas A&M helped establish the Bangladesh Agricultural University. Our faculty spent about 100-person-years in Bangladesh, our largest project ever. We were also the key U.S. institution helping to establish or strengthen Antonio Narro Autonomous Agricultural University in Saltillo, Mexico; the Chott Merriam University in Tunisia; the Post Graduate Institute for Agriculture in Sri Lanka; and the Instituto Superior Agricultura in Santiago, Dominican Republic. All have interesting stories. One is that former Texas A&M President Earl Rudder intervened with President Lyndon Johnson to secure the Dominican Republic contract when it appeared another university was poised to grab the project that we had started.
There have been periods at Texas A&M when administrators thought that working in other countries shortchanged Texans. I arrived here at the end of one such period, and the program has been progressing ever since.
I believe that the failure to internationalize learning, research and extension would, in fact, undermine the future of Texans. Our future markets, the careers of our graduates, and the well-being of our communities all depend partly upon the degree to which the university system recognizes and acts upon opportunities for teaching, research and extension in, about and for other nations.
The International Agriculture program has projects under way in Afghanistan, Armenia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Rwanda and Uzbekistan. How are projects chosen?
Of course those are only a few of the places we serve. When one counts all the countries where students or faculty have served over the past five years, in all kinds of programs, there are 105 countries! Actually our Institute, on behalf the State of Texas, rarely rejects outright the opportunity to serve. Many would question such a strategy, but it is based on these observations:
- So much has to fall in place for a good idea to reach fruition, that one needs to be open to new partnerships. Many of what appear to be great opportunities at the outset, don’t “pan out.” And some of the most “off the wall” opportunities work out very well indeed. For example, six successive projects in Indonesia started with a casual comment from an officer of McDonald’s saying that the company had problems shipping frozen poultry in Asia. One of our student workers, Andy Hale, was game for a challenge, so we sent him on a McDonald’s delivery truck the length of Java. The rest is history. Today we operate the Southeast Asia Food and Agriculture Science and Technology (SEAFAST) Center in Bogor, Indonesia.
- In general, one is limited to the opportunities that donors provide. When you think about the political and market system we value as Americans, the opportunities reflect what society values at the moment. It is rare for an unsolicited proposal to be funded. It takes far more energy to find funding for a program which no donor has suggested, than to respond to an RFP, or request for proposal. However there is one very important corollary to this for universities—we should critique societies’ choices, and we should learn as scholars from what we do. Knowledge, theory and an enhanced environment for student learning should emerge from our projects, and thereby shape what society values in the future.
- We also tend to favor programs in our areas of recognized expertise. Opportunities tend to emerge in areas for which we are known and in which we have a track record. For example, at present, we are doing a lot of work in food safety, food processing and agribusiness—in Indonesia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Armenia, El Salvador and Guatemala. Therefore, when we hear about a forthcoming project in agribusiness or food safety, our ears prick up. There are also many other areas in which our expertise is highly regarded.
- Finally, there are few countries in the world where we will tend to invest in student or faculty travel, and seed money for programs—if they have a well-articulated goal with an expected payoff. These countries, chosen some time ago in an extended review process, are Mexico, China, India, France, Nigeria, Russia and Indonesia. There were good reasons for each, that I won’t go into, except for France—an interesting case. It was chosen when Governor Rick Perry was Commissioner of Agriculture. France was seen as Texas’ partner of choice in Europe. It’s worked for us, and I like to point out that France was the first country to recognize Texas as an independent republic. Today one can still see the former Embassy of the Republic of Texas at One Place Vendome, in Paris, and the French Legation in Austin.
How are projects funded?
Most projects are funded through competitive grants, contracts and cooperative agreements from the U.S. federal government. Probably about two-thirds of the federal money is from USAID, and about one-third from USDA. The USDA funds have been mostly from the sale of surplus U.S. commodities, under the Food for Progress and 416b programs. We have to work with Congress to keep those programs funded and then we compete with others for the projects.
We are the only U.S. university that has successfully competed for such funds. We also have received funds through foreign countries that come in the form of loans by the World Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank and Asian Development Bank. Foreign countries are, of course, very careful when they spend borrowed money, and we have to go by their rules of accounting, not U.S. rules. That is sometimes complex and difficult. We also receive some funds from foundations, gifts, corporations and countries themselves.
At the recent Agriculture Program Conference, Elsa Murano, the vice chancellor and dean, said that the Ag Program would introduce new programs in China this year. What are some of these programs?
One of the key areas which we have prioritized for China is the restoration of rangelands in Mongolia, and development in Western China in general. We also want a flagship cooperative program with one or more advanced agricultural universities, involving students and faculty.
We have had a high visibility with China through four previous conferences: the inaugural conference for the Bush Library complex, the International Conference on Science and Technology, and the two previous China-U.S. relations conferences. Texas A&M has one of the strongest contingents in the U.S. of faculty members, post docs and students with Chinese heritage or interest.
Your office offers study abroad programs in Tunisia, Belgium, France, South Africa and Vietnam. How many students participate each year? Why are these experiences important?
Unfortunately, we probably peaked out on study abroad about four years ago at about 90 students, and we need to rebuild. My hat goes off the many faculty who take students on study abroad. They go largely unrecognized for their efforts. With increased university concerns about risk, these faculty are charged with more and more responsibility. I wish they received more recognition for their contributions. Instead, administrators, and I count myself partly to blame, are often more focused on issues of accountability, contact hours, content of courses, etc. The courses are excellent and the students gain enormously, but too many administrators have the old stay-at-home Texas syndrome.
Still, I regard study abroad as only the first step. On study abroad, a student remains in a managed learning environment. The next step is internships or work abroad, when a student needs to perform according to foreign standards, and respond to foreign market and behavioral signals. Now some Aggies are taking it still a step further, and creating development programs for themselves and other Aggies in other countries. This is the most demanding of all engagements—creating jobs in another country. This will put A&M a level beyond other institutions. These experiences are important because they advance the future careers of students, they serve the economic future of their communities and the State of Texas, and they help to make the U.S. a better nation.
The Office of International Agriculture was renamed The Norman E. Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture last fall. Why was this change made?
Many reasons, but I’ll mention two. First of all, colleagues throughout the university system, and around the nation, strongly believe that the work of Dr. Borlaug, distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M for 23 years, must continue and expand to serve the world. If not us, who will lead it? No institution in the world is better placed to continue his legacy, especially when he is here to guide us. Robert Horsch, who was a senior executive at Monsanto and is now at the Gates Foundation, pointed out some of Norm’s values on which we should build our programs. He said Norm is “bold and courageous, a man of action and committed to science.” These values are important for our institute and the future of international development.
I mentioned the importance of associating scholarship with our work in international development. Being renamed an institute gives us a chance to emphasize the role of scholarship in what we do. Consulting firms are our frequent partners or competitors in development projects, and we have to show donors that we can be as good as they are at project implementation. But as a university we have the added obligation to learn from the development processes, to store that knowledge, and to impart it to our community of faculty, students and fellow citizens.
We have one of the most important international development programs in the U.S. today. We should also have one of the strongest communities of development scholars, students, and international extension educators. It is my hope that we will be able to associate several endowed chairs and fellowships in different fields of international agriculture with the Borlaug Institute, to help learn, teach, and extend the benefits of what we do to the larger community. The first of these endowed chairs has just been announced with the funding of the Borlaug-Monsanto Chair in Plant Breeding and International Crop Improvement. We would like to endow chairs in international youth entrepreneurship, food systems, technology and conflict, and science communication, among other areas.