Last night, I attended a meeting of the Torch Club—a group
of people from a variety of professions and disciplines who meet monthly for
dinner and a talk by one of the members.
Our speaker last night was Dr. Steve Smith, professor emeritus of
Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at Penn State. His topic: “Traditional Agriculture in Latin America.”
Steve focused on how village farmers in Peru used
centuries-old techniques, including terracing to raise a variety of crops
year-around in a very arid climate.
It was, at one level, a very interesting travelogue, with wonderful
photos of rural Peru and the farming families who produce 27 or more varieties
of potatoes and other vegetables in this demanding climate. However, at another level, it was a
brilliant insight into how important these traditional farming techniques are
becoming as the world changes.
As Steve described traditional threshing process used in
Peru, others in the group raised their hands to say, “That’s also done in
Egypt” and “I’ve seen that in Turkey, too.” Steve noted that there are more than a billion traditional
farmers worldwide and that their work is critical to the economic health of
many countries around the world.
He also reported that, in the next 30 years, the world’s demand for food
will grow by 50%. In the past,
agriculturalists looked to the Green Revolution to meet this demand. However, the impact of the Green
Revolution has begun to level off.
Supporting traditional farmers—and helping them improve the output of
traditional farming techniques—will be critical to meeting the world’s need for
food in the next generation. Steve
emphasized that the goal should not be to replace traditional farming with
something else. These traditional
techniques have proven to be effective in mountainous and arid areas where
other approaches would fail. The
key is to help these farmers be more productive within the context of their
traditional methods.
America’s research excellence in agriculture began as a
response to the Industrial Revolution.
The societal worry then (in the late 1800s) was that we might not be
able to support the immigration and urbanization that drove industrialization;
we feared we could not produce enough food to feed the cities. Land grant universities took
responsibility for agricultural education and research and for extending that
knowledge to farmers and rural communities through the Cooperative Extension
Service. It was, in reflection, a
wonderful example of governments and social institutions working together in a
sustained effort to meet an ongoing societal need. American agricultural education became a model for the
world.
Today we are living in a globalized Information Society. The challenge will be
to find productive ways in which our universities—in the United States and elsewhere—can help make
traditional farming and other forms of farming around the world more productive
in the decades ahead. Do we need a
global counterpart to the 19th century U.S. commitment to
agricultural research and education?
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