Linking Research to Crop Production

In 1941, The Rockefeller Foundation sent a team of three American agricultural scientists to Mexico to survey the pros- pects for increasing grain production there. The nature of the program that was subsequently established by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations has had a large influence upon the evolu- tion of agricultural research for the developing countries, and the project grew into what is now called the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution has been vastly successful because there was abundant research and technology available to draw upon. Now the Green Revolution has evolved into a very complex program of development; the momentum has slowed; and it appears that the time has come to reconstruct the research base which underlies the cropping systems for the third world. What are some of the problems that we face? The expanding world population is taking up more living space just when land is urgently needed to feed the 6.3 billion persons projected for the year 2000. The causes of the population problem are deeply imprinted in the social pattern of most countries, and certainly there are no simple solutions in a nation unwilling to restrain population growth. The problem of population growth, and others like it, is very much a sociological problem.