In a departure from presenting a single pioneer interview, this installment
features excerpts from a diverse cross-section of interviewees' responses to one
question: As IRRI approaches its 50th anniversary in 2010, what do you see as
the Institute’s greatest challenge? Interviews were conducted between June 2006
and June 2009.
More will be added as interviews continue.
Randy
Barker, IRRI
agricultural economist and head, Economics Department, 1966-78;
acting head, IRRI Social Sciences Division, 2007-08
When I first came to
IRRI in 1966 just before IR8 [was released;
rice variety that jump-started the Green Revolution],
people at that time looked at IRRI and said, “that’s a nice set of
buildings,” but they didn’t think the Institute would ever produce
anything. There was a real skepticism about whether IRRI would ever
amount to anything. Joining IRRI was like buying into a stock that all
of a sudden took off.
In the early days, the IRRI mandate was fairly simple and
straightforward, increase rice production in Asia, and so the focus and
the priorities were there. Since that time, we’ve gone from food
security to environment and poverty and other areas. So, in many ways,
the mandates of IRRI and of the other centers tended to expand.
Michael Lipton once referred to this as “mission
creep.” Over time, things have become more difficult, particularly with
the decline in unrestricted funding.
The real challenge now is being sure that IRRI operates in
the area where it has the greatest comparative advantage. For example,
the challenge for upstream work is to have the appropriate connections
with the advanced institutions for developing biotechnology research.
When going downstream, this means, in part, the ability to transfer some
of that biotechnology expertise and focusing it in those areas that are
going to complement what the NARES [national agricultural research and
extension systems] are doing. One of the things to recognize, of course,
is that the NARES now are much more competent than they were back in,
say, 1960, so they can handle a lot of the traditional work that IRRI
was doing then.
A friend of mine told me that IRRI and the other centers
should be noted, not for the research that they intend to do, but for
the research that they won’t do. What is it that IRRI won’t do because
someone else can do it better? And [in my expertise of economics], it
is pretty much the same sort of question. We have a strong comparative
advantage in collecting and analyzing farm household data on a wide
range of issues—for example, who is adopting the technology, who isn’t,
and why? This is one of the best ways we can support the biophysical
scientists.
Nyle C. Brady,
IRRI director general, 1973-81 I
think IRRI needs to make effective use of biotechnology and other modern
research tools to help the plant breeders develop rice lines that
efficiently utilize plant nutrients, that tolerate adverse conditions
such as drought, and that are resistant to insects and diseases, thereby
reducing the need for pesticides.
To do this, IRRI must have linkages with scientists in both
the developing and the more developed countries. This is advice the
whole CGIAR [Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research] systemcould accept. I recognize the political reasons why this is
difficult because some countries don’t want biotechnology to be used for
this purpose. But the developing countries need the improved crops much
more than we do in the U.S. So, I think this is the direction in which
IRRI and other such centers should and could go.
IRRI must also continue to push what it has been doing
lately—more after I left than when I was there—to recognize the
consequences of what we do to the environment in terms of pesticide
use—and fertilizer use, that is, nitrogen getting into the water causing
troubles later on. This is being done, but I think even more can be
done. I think this is an opportunity for IRRI to develop high yields of
quality rice in such a way that the soil, water, and atmosphere will not
be adversely affected. It’s a real challenge to know exactly how that
should be done, but I think it can be done. I’m not suggesting that the
Institute is not doing it; IRRI has already made remarkable progress,
particularly with its Environmental Agenda.
Clearly, it is the
funding issue. What comes with the funding uncertainty is creating some
difficulty in hiring staff. IRRI has been able to continue to hire good
international staff. But there is uncertainty [caused by] restricted
core funding and the threat of the loss of all USAID funding
[in July 2008].
If you are a bright young
scientist just out of graduate school, do you want to take a chance on
starting your career there? “There” meaning not necessarily IRRI but
“there” meaning in that kind of system. So, unless there are some things
that will stabilize the funding, it may create some problems for IRRI in
the future of being able to hire international staff. I think that is
the greatest challenge that IRRI will face. The culture of the Institute
is rich; it’s great. I just think it needs to have a more stable
environment.
Kwanchai
Gomez,
IRRI head statistician, 1968-1993; liaison for coordination and
planning, 1993-96; consultant, 1997-98
I think IRRI’s
greatest challenge is probably to define clearly the kind of
contributions it still can make to the rice world. Times have changed.
IRRI cannot just keep doing the same things it did at the start. IRRI
has come a long way [47 years as of the time of the interview] and the
rice problems of the world have changed drastically. IRRI must define
what its present goals are; who are its clients and what are their
expectations? What does the rice world need and what and how can IRRI
contribute?
It’s true that IRRI is an aging institution, and it may not be
easy to re-define its goal, its mandate, and adapt new strategies and
directions at this point in time. But, unlike old people, it is still
easier to revive and renew an old institution. And I think IRRI should
be able to find the way.
IRRI has a new strategic plan, Bringing hope, improving lives.
Some see it simply as a patch-up job of what it is doing now or
maintaining a status quo. Whenever a strategic plan is developed
purely by the people from inside the institution, it carries too much
baggage; it’s heavy. Who will work on a strategy and work plan that will
put them out of their jobs tomorrow? Nobody, of course! I myself had
worked closely with the first IRRI strategic plan, I should know. I
think IRRI is at present struggling with its identity, and one can see
that in this new strategic plan.
Ronnie
Coffman,
IRRI plant breeder, 1971-81; currently chair, Department of Plant
Breeding & Genetics, and director of International Programs, Cornell
University
This week [30
January 2007], I believe there's a major meeting in Europethat will give the latest projections on global warming and
the rise of sea level. That could prove to be the greatest challenge for
IRRI, for plant breeding, and for rice science in general because, as
you know, the majority of rice is found in the large low-lying river
deltas of Asia. The Ganges, the
Brahmaputra,
the Irrawaddy,
the Mekong, all
those big deltas are, in some cases, only a few inches above sea level.
So, right now, the minimum prediction for sea-level rise, I was reading,
is a conservative projection of 38 inches by the middle of this century.
This will obliterate places like Bangladesh, West Bengal, and the Mekong
Delta.
This is huge. So, what will happen, slowly, or maybe not so
slowly, is that brackish water will get pushed up the rivers and affect
the growth of the rice. And you get less and less fresh water coming
down because glaciers are melting in the Himalaya at the rate that
people can't believe. So, you're going to get a scarcity of fresh water
and then the rising sea level that pushes in the brackish water. That's
going to push the cultivation of rice way back in a gradual, or maybe
not so gradual, manner. So, salinity tolerance might offer some help.
But I think the global warming and the resulting rise in sea level—and
remember that 38 inches is the minimum prediction; others are predicting
more and faster—that portends a real crisis in rice cultivation.
There are challenges
and I’m sure IRRI is aware of them as it modifies its mandate. During
its first decade [1960s], IRRI’s challenge was to improve productivity.
The second decade [Nyle
Brady era] had the challenge of putting it
into a farming systems
background. During my decade, we had the challenge of mainstreaming
considerations of ecology and equity in technology development and
dissemination and also building national rice research institutions,
including one in the Philippines.
IRRI’s greatest challenges today are
against the backdrop of globalization. The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
present a challenge for IRRI because, for 40% of the world’s population,
rice is a staple. So, the very first MDG, reducing hunger and reducing poverty,
depends greatly on IRRI’s work, along with its national partners. So,
there is a great responsibility. Then, of course, MDG number 3 is
gender equality [and empowerment of
women], where again IRRI has been the flagship of the
gender equity movement in the world, the first scientific institution,
which started strong gender mainstreaming of its work [see IRRI’s 1985
book, Women in Rice Farming,
and 1988 book, Filipino Women in Rice Farming Systems].
I would say the number-one challenge is this new vision for IRRI, which
places poverty alleviation and hunger elimination at the top of its
agenda.
Another challenge is
dealing with the public/private partnerships in an IPR [intellectual
property rights] environment. This problem
came to the fore with Golden Rice;
how do we really develop public/private partnerships under the
conditions of IPR? Increasingly, scientific work is being protected by
IPR. As they commonly say, the “Green Revolution” was a public-sector
enterprise, while the “Gene Revolution” is a private-sector enterprise.
So, how are we going to develop this new kind of partnership between the
public and private sector without compromising IRRI’s commitment to help
the poor farmers? Social inclusion for access to new technologies should
be the bottom line of IRRI’s technology dissemination policy.
And a third very important challenge is in the area of germplasm
exchange in conjunction with the Convention on Biological Diversity
[and The International Treaty on Plant Genetic
Resources for Food and Agriculture], which
concerns biodiversity as national property. IRRI and its national
partners now use the material transfer agreement,
a methodthat
shows we are not taking somebody’s material and giving it away to
somebody else. There’s a lot of suspicion as to whether the IRRI gene
bank will be exploited by the private sector for private profit. IRRI is
now working in a more difficult environment, both political and
economic.
One more challenge, I would say, is to use the new technologies
of communication effectively. The whole world is different today. IRRI
has to be a leader in terms of communication, through the Internet,
through its databases, etc. We now have much faster methods of
disseminating information around the world and we can leap from there.
So, life becomes more interesting when some old challenges are
solved and new challenges come along. We need new challenges as we enter
the 21st century, and as you can see we have them. An institute should
always be ready to change course. If it is not, it will be passed by
others.
When I was at IRRI,
I didn’t realize until I left how inward-looking we were. Somehow, we
felt that our donors will continue to support us no matter what we do. I
think IRRI scientists have to go beyond the inward-looking posture to
communicate and network with the best minds all over the world and to
collaborate much more aggressively. Otherwise, down the road, I can see
that we’ll have problems garnering funds.
What I have noticed over the last 5–6 years is that IRRI is not
making headlines in the United States, when, 5, 10, or 15 years back,
IRRI news was major news here [in the U.S.]: Washington Post,
New York Times.
I don’t see any breakthroughs coming out, which are hitting the
headlines. [At the time of the interview with Dr. De Datta on 25 June
2006, this was perhaps true, but now, in 2009, IRRI is routinely making headlines in the U.S. and
around the world; see Times and Post links
above.] This is no criticism of IRRI. We need to generate more relevant
knowledge and technology and to communicate with the U.S. and other
industrial nations so they feel excited about IRRI’s research and
support it on a sustained basis.
I can see that the [IRRI] strategic plan is a very good one. The
U.S. has an important audience to communicate it to. I think that [IRRI
Director General] Bob Zeigler is doing that. Some former administrations
didn’t do that, somewhat ignoring the United States and concentrating on
Europe and Japan. Okay. But the U.S. is still a major player in the
world economy and it can still be helpful.
IRRI must communicate its new
knowledge and technology, which will help the next generation of food
producers and consumers around the world. The primary beneficiaries are
the developing regions but let’s not forget that the developed regions
are our partners and we need to do a better job communicating with them
as to why they need to support IRRI and other CGIAR centers. So, I
consider that as a big, big challenge because resources are shrinking
all over the world. We’ve got to do a lot more communication and
information exchange and, at the same time, try to bring in more U.S.
scientists, more postdocs, and encourage them to come to IRRI and other
CGIAR centers to collaborate. That is my perspective.
IRRI’s greatest
challenge is to continue to do the work it is doing and keep the money
coming in so that it is able to carry out the plan. The world is
changing so much right now that we don’t have any idea of what really is
going to happen. There’s obviously not just a food crisis, which has
been building up for a long time. Then, these different factors hit all
at once: a decrease in funding for research and the demand for food and
fuel with 30% of the U.S. corn crop going into ethanol. At the same
time, Indians and Chinese are achieving higher incomes and they want to
drive cars too and, as incomes rise, they eat less rice and want more
meat. It takes 8 kg of grain to make 1 kg of beef, 5 kilos to make 1
kilo of pork, and about 2 kilos to make a kilo of poultry. So, this is
also causing the grain crunch and it affects everything.
Of course, fertilizer (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus) is
essential to the nutrient production needed to make the ethanol and to
feed the livestock to accommodate the changing food habits of China and
India. All of these things are coming together. A farmer in Togo or Mali
in West Africa who grows rice or any other crop, a couple of years ago,
had to pay twice what a farmer in Iowa has to pay for a kilogram of
urea. The farmer in Togo needs the fertilizer a lot more than the farmer
in Iowa. Now, with the price of fertilizer doubling, tripling in the
United States, I think it’s going to be almost impossible in Africa.
This could be one of IRRI’s greatest
challenges in Africa if indeed there’s to be an African Green
Revolution. At IFDC, I’ve been part of the planning [as IFDC’s
coordinator, Information and Communications Unit]. The [Asian] Green
Revolution ran on fertilizer. There is just no way around that. It ran
on plant nutrients by getting them into a consolidated form that could
be applied through fertilizers. There is not enough organic matter for
organic fertilizers—that sounds like a really neat idea, but it isn’t
going to work. It’s not going to feed the world. I think the biggest
challenge that IRRI is going to have in Africa is how will it get the
plant nutrients in there to fuel the African Green Revolution. I truly
hope that IFDC will be working with IRRI on this in the future.
I think IRRI’s
greatest challenge is how to turn over management and responsibility to
the Asian countries that are the primary beneficiaries. There are many
hundreds of millions of people in Asia who are still in need of the
benefits of new technology and higher productivity, but there are also
hundreds of millions in other countries in the world who are in a lot
worse shape. Rice research is at a high level of development in Asia.
This is something that Asian countries should take more responsibility
for. If they don’t feel like there is enough value to them having a
regional research institute, then I personally don’t believe the rest of
the world should be supporting the whole thing. So, that’s the biggest
challenge, I think.
As the national
programs have become stronger, IRRI has started putting emphasis
on certain areas where it has a comparative advantage, such as in
molecular biology and biotechnology.
IRRI stopped naming varieties because the national programs have become
strong enough so we only need to supply them with germplasm. The
challenge will continue for IRRI to find new techniques, which can help
the national programs.
In breeding, I think we have to continue to find approaches to
increase yield potential and to identify new sources of disease and
insect resistance so that they can be supplied to the national programs.
Also, [IRRI needs to] use the new genetic engineering technology.
The
environment for accepting genetically modified crops
is not as good as it should be, but eventually, I think, in a few years,
the national programs, the farmers, and the NGOs will start accepting
genetically modified materials. Molecular biology techniques to use
include molecular marker-aided selection
and identifying QTLs [quantitative
trait loci] for difficult traits, such as
drought.
So, the challenge is to work with national programs to incorporate all
these techniques into breeding approaches. This should lead to rice
improvement efforts that focus on increasing the yield potential and
developing varieties with novel traits.
I
guessed that you might ask such a question. I recall the very first
draft of a new strategic plan, developed in 1994, with the title IRRI
towards 2050. It was rejected in the committee and by the board
because the horizon was seen to be by far too long. Of course, nobody
knew if IRRI would exist in 2050.
However, in my view, there are five functions, which I stressed
at that time and still valid for IRRI in 2050: (1) to house the base
collection of the world’s rice germplasm and to perform the many
evaluation, research, preservation, and service functions that this
responsibility entails; (2) to collect, evaluate, select, and make
accessible information on current rice research and development
programs, rice and rice-related research, and global rice research
resources—human, financial, and physical; (3) to retain a response
capability, which can catalyze the use of those resources through
internationally recruited teams working on topics of supra-national
importance; (4) to organize and convene conferences, task forces,
seminars, and meetings to facilitate the exchange of information and to
focus the application of knowledge on the resolution of emerging
problems; and (5) to define research needs that can be taken care of by
existing research centers. worldwide, promote funding, and harmonize the
implementation.
What we
call “new frontier” or “man-on-the-moon” projects, such as the 15-ton
yield goal, N-fixation of rice, a C4 rice, or a perennial rice plant
for the sloping uplands conceptualized in the early ‘90s, to mention
only a few, will take at least 20–30 years to mature. Taking those
objectives into account, half a century seems to be a realistic thinking
horizon for a strategic research center.
Given its mandate, IRRI’s future, its lifetime, will largely
depend on its successful search for excellence in all aspects of its
endeavors: excellence in research planning and implementation;
excellence in human resource management, cooperation, and collaboration;
excellence in efficiency and effectiveness at all levels; and excellence
in its financial resource management and not to forget in public
awareness, creating a conducive donor-, partner-, client-, target-group
relationship.
Our world has changed and is still changing dramatically in many
aspects. The Millennium Development Goals formulated 10 years ago by the world community have been
unrealistic from the very beginning. I must confess that I never
believed in them. Given the obvious absence of the political will
needed, reducing the present level of extreme poverty by half is closer
to an illusion than a realistic goal. Rural areas have been and remain
until today neglected worldwide. However, the present global financial
and economic crises may serve as a welcome reason to put agriculture and
rural development again on the back-burner of political priorities. The
price we will have to pay if that happens will be high. Our own
community cannot escape from a remarkable share of responsibility for
that dilemma. The international and national research community has
still to join forces and come forward loud and clear with a strong call
for change: from sweet talking to hard decision making and the political
will to make it happen: leading the one-third of our globe’s
fellow-inhabitants out of poverty. One is inclined to quote the
political question of the day: “Yes,
we can,
but do we want to?”
The biggest
challenge for IRRI today is that many of the national programs that it
is assisting are also becoming very strong. So, even PhilRice (Philippine
Rice Research Institute) today has a
biotechnology program that’s almost comparable to the program at IRRI.
If you get into China, IRRI can’t compete with biotechnology programs
there just because of the numbers of scientists that they have and their
ability to do things on a grand scale, not that the quality of science
at IRRI is not as good.
IRRI needs to really find its niche in Asian situations, in
which the national programs are now quite capable as well. I think there
really is a niche for IRRI. It’s doing those kinds of things that can be
shared across all of the rice research institutions in Asia or worldwide
and that wouldn’t likely be done by a national program or, if they were,
that they wouldn’t get shared. IRRI needs to be a coordinator, a source
of knowledge or information, and continually a source of breeding lines,
which have traits that have been generated through advanced science done
throughout the world that no national program can probably access.
The
new Sub1 lines
that have submergence tolerance are a good example. The initial real
work on that was done at the University of California, Davis. Not only
was the technology transferred, but the person who did the work, David Mackill,
was transferred as well from California to IRRI. And so, the next phase
in that process was done at IRRI and all submergence-tolerant materials
are now being shared with the national programs. I really do think
there’s an important role for IRRI to be the conduit by which and
through which the best science in the world gets applied to rice
research and then shared with the national programs in Asia.
Susan
McCouch,
IRRI associate geneticist, 1990-94; currently Professor of Plant
Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University
I think the great
challenge is whether IRRI is going to persist as an institution as we’ve
known it or whether it’s going to be transformed into something more
virtual. That is how I envision the great challenges that lie ahead. The
reason I say that is because I think that we have a reason to hold on to
much of the infrastructure that’s there, but part of the infrastructure
that’s there has given way to other parts of the world and in other
institutions to a kind of networking approach to research. Often, we’re
not necessarily able to attract needed expertise we need to a given
physical location for the period of time during which we need to
interact. So, I see IRRI’s future as becoming more and more that of a
network of collaborators rather than a mortar and brick place where you
go and you are only IRRI staff because you are there.
I think that is
illustrated, in part, by what I experienced during the last 3 years of
my contract with IRRI during which I was a shuttle researcher with a responsibility to IRRI but with a
lab here at Cornell. There was a thought process that encompassed a larger
perspective on how we could utilize molecular markers effectively in
plant breeding. When my contract ended with IRRI and I became a Cornell
professor, the fact that my program did not change, and in fact my
loyalties never changed, suggest that there are people like me out there
for whom an inter-institutional working relationship might be a very
productive way to envision the future.
I also believe that
we need to hold on to the mortar and the bricks and the seeds that are
in the gene bank and that is a precious resource that we really have to
have in one place that we can actually access--it's a living resource
that we need to be looking after. However, a lot of the computational work, a
lot of the electronic communication, even a lot of the networking and
scientific efforts that I participate in are done now in a much more
virtual way. I think that the Institute is looking forward to a future
of increased movement of ideas and resources and also a very different
relationship between the public and the private sector as the ways in
which funding happens are changing.
I think we have to
reinvent our institutions. It’s not just IRRI that will have to reinvent
itself. I think that universities in the United States are undergoing an
enforced reinvention. I hope that maybe we can come together and think
about who we train as university people or people in the international
sector and how we’re training the next generation of scientists. Which
problems do we need to come together to address and then use a new
institutional framework that includes colleagues in the private sector
as well to try to address those needs?
So, I think IRRI is
not alone in facing these challenges. I think it would be nice to see
our institutions get together and come up with something novel that
would work and it will engage the world’s most dedicated and brightest
people and help work through some of the bottlenecks and some of the
backlog that we’ve been unable to break through due to institutional
barriers in the past.
IRRI when it was founded had a different
challenge at that time as Dr. [Robert] Chandler
explains in his book, An Adventure in Applied Science.
Now, as 30–40 years have gone and we are coming to the 50th year,
completing five decades, the national programs have become stronger. The
challenges of rice cultivation, rice farmers, rice consumers, and the
worldwide rice community have become vulnerable, complicated, and
complex. So, under these circumstances, certainly, the challenge is that
we should not be going deep in strategic research and ignoring the fact
that we have solid practical problems. Whatever strategic and basic
research is needed, according to the Institute’s capability and
resources, it should be done either here or in collaboration with
advanced countries. But our focus should be to put IRRI in a situation
that it can solve practical problems.
Now, this requires a balance in which we empower
ourselves in such a way that we can really perform the best. If we start
working on the strategic or basic research side, do we have a
comparative advantage to compete with the advanced countries, advanced
labs, and the private sector in many of these technologies? We can’t
compete with them because we don’t have the resources. So, I think our
stance should be to put ourselves in a very strategic point in this
whole continuum from basic research to applied and downstream work so
that we can perform and not lose sight of addressing farmers’ problems.
That’s the biggest challenge I see and then performing the job with the
financial constraints that we are facing.
So, basically, the challenge is solving practical problems
by using advanced science through strategic collaborations with both
national programs and a strong private sector. We have to know how to
work with the private sector. I still feel that CGIAR centers as a
whole, including IRRI, are not yet very clear on how to work with the
private sector—in a way that we also get something in return. Of course,
in hybrid rice, we have been working in a way that, whatever is
available, we are sharing with both the public and private sector. But
that’s just giving every time. We are not getting anything in return
from it and the reason we can’t get anything back is because we don’t
have a mechanism and that’s another challenge that we have to face.
[note: since this interview, an international Hybrid Rice Research and Development
Consortium has been established.] Based on
my experience in hybrid rice, if we can develop a model of collaboration
with the private sector, I think it would also be useful for many other
seed-based technologies that we have in the pipeline right now and where
we can make an impact 5 to 10 years from now.
One of the challenges that IRRI is already
addressing, I think, is, how does rice fit in the whole scheme of
conservation, biodiversity, and cropping systems?
What is the importance of methane gases
rising from rice paddies to global warming? These are the kinds of
relevant issues, I think, that have a global
importance. I read that high-yielding varieties produce less methane so
the higher amount of carbohydrates going into grain rather than into the
roots, stems, and leaves, the less methane is produced. These are some
of the global issues.
Then there are issues
of pesticide overuse in tropical lowland
rice. I think this will continue to be a problem that
IRRI will need to focus on. Some countries are better than others.
Policy decisions are involved. It’s easier in places such as Indonesia
where you can change the policy very quickly. In other areas, it’s not
as easily done. I think the whole farmer field school concept is a good
one as is the farmer participatory kind of thing like what is being done
with the IPM CRSP [Integrated
Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program].
There are some challenges, but I think they are not insurmountable. They
are all tied to poverty alleviation. So, I look forward to continuing my
association with IRRI and working in integrated pest management.
Currently, we have a new project starting up with the IPM CRSP, which
includes vegetable and rice-based cropping systems. Our focus is on
Southeast Asia, principally the Philippines and Indonesia. We are
working with the University of the University of the Philippines at Los
Baños, the Philippine Rice Research Institute,
and three or four institutions in Indonesia. So, exciting things are in
the future and I look forward to continued association with IRRI and to
continue to make an impact.
A continued response to the environmental challenges, including
biodiversity, is going to be an important one. Farmers are very capable
in making adjustments to their production systems in response to changes
in climate if they know what these are going to be. So, working with
farmers and keeping them informed is going to be a very important aspect
of accommodating environmental changes.
Water, of course, is going to be more and more an issue. The
sustainable management of water both on the flooding side and on the
drought side—more so with the drought side—is going to be important. And
then there is the whole change in the demand structure for rice.
Nutritional quality is going to be more important and the changes in
diets towards higher protein and vegetable components are going to
reduce the relative level of rice demand in the future and, I think,
keep the rice prices from going up forever. Prices are high now but I
think they will be coming down.
This all leads to some different challenges in rice research.
The present-day long-term “pie-in-the-sky” or “put-a-man-on-the-moon
types of projects are sound, but they must continue to be considered as
long shots until a very few really pay off.
The other aspect is the whole area of toxins. I think good work
is being done in IPM [integrated
pest management]
in reducing the use of toxins
but there has got to be a more hard-nosed approach and policy guidelines
need to be influenced regarding the use of toxins in production and
subsequent storage of products so that the health aspects of food are
captured more efficiently. Again, it’s very hard to pin down what should
be done by IRRI and how IRRI should be doing this in the area of human
health and eco-health. There’s a very complex relationship between the
impact of the context of agriculture and the effect on the health of the
farmers and their families. There can be impact on their ability to
produce rice; their decision making is going to be affected as are their
health and energy level if they are affected by pesticides and other
health challenges. So, I think that IRRI has a responsibility in that
component, not just in the nutritional quality of the rice, but also the
consequences of the production of rice for the health of the operators,
their families, and the ecology. These aspects need to have a more
central place in the agenda, because people are going to be more
demanding and more sensitive to that in the future.
The greatest challenge for IRRI as it approaches its 50th anniversary is
keeping it relevant for its clients. In this changing world, there are
many, many knowledge providers in the private sector, which is taking
over the development and delivery of many technologies. There are
universities as well. So, most challenging will be keeping it relevant
in terms of the needs of the changing farming systems and changing
requirements of the farmers.
Related to agronomy and crop management, definitely the farms
are getting smaller and smaller and they cannot be very effective. There
should be some way of consolidating the farms and making them more
mechanized so that the younger generation will stay in farming.
Otherwise, the next generation will not be farming because they’ll be
educated and interested in some other job [see comments on this issue by
Punjabi farmer Jagjit Singh Hara in his pioneer interview].
But, somebody has to produce the food. So, if you don’t keep farming
very attractive to the next generation, I’m afraid that we will be
losing the battle in terms of food production related to population
growth. That is where I see the difficulty.
Krishna
Alluri,
IRRI liaison scientist for Africa and coordinator, INGER-Africa,
1987-96;
education specialist, food security and environment, Commonwealth of Learning,
1997-2008; currently a freelance
development facilitator based in Vancouver
The challenges are
many. When IRRI started, the strength of the national programs was
rather low and IRRI was kind of a giant. Now, there are a lot more
national programs in Asia and outside of Asia that have good research
and training capacities. So, IRRI should now be operating much more
strategically and collaboratively on a partnership basis—and I believe
it is. There are so many things that IRRI doesn’t have to do all by
itself. IRRI should assist the national programs to take a higher level
of responsibility and IRRI can work with them hand-in-hand. So, the consortium and
team approaches of being a partner are opportunities for IRRI.
Having had experience in working with IRRI and rice in
different countries, and stepping out and looking at how education and
training can contribute to development and using that as a means in
support of IRRI and similar organizations, I feel that this is something
that the CGIAR, as a whole, has probably not capitalized on
sufficiently. Training programs
and research were the two main focuses of all the international centers,
but progressively, emphasis on training sort of decreased. That probably
was not the best decision for the CGIAR overall.
If we want IRRI to really make a contribution for
the farmers who depend on rice for their livelihood, improving their
education, training, and life-long learning are extremely important
components. I see that the CGIAR and IRRI should find the best ways
to build on the scientific and research capacity with ICT [information
and communication technology] and ODL [open
and distance learning] and thus make a
much bigger contribution towards life-long learning of farmers in the
developing world.
I think what happened in the Green Revolution was a real quantum jump in
yield potential. With the present-day means of evaluating genes from
wild rice species, we’ve already found that yield genes [exist]. The
challenge will be to get these genes into agronomic types to lift yield
potential still more.
There’s no doubt that agronomy is going to play a very important
part, but I think yield potential is going to be a leader. With farmers
doing more precision farming, they will be able to take advantage of
more yield potential in the new varieties. So, there’s quite a jump
available, I think, in the future. Of course, the utility is going to be
dependent on agronomy, which needs to improve, along with other
disciplines as well.
Bart
Duff,
IRRIagricultural economist, 1970-90; currently operates, with
wife Paz Aurora, an NGO, Poor No More, Inc., on the Philippine
island of Palawan
I believe IRRI’s greatest challenge will be to continuously revise
and re-invent itself to more meaningfully anticipate and address
contemporary issues while optimizing its limited resources. The
resources IRRI now has are smaller than when I left the Institute in
1990. And yet, the need for rice research is no less now than it was
three decades earlier. The complexity and sophistication of IRRI’s
research today are awesome, but in many instances simply addressing old
problems with new tools. For example, IRRI’s pioneering work in genome
mapping and gene manipulation continues to focus on yield, disease, and
environmental constraints, but is now able to overcome problems
considered unsolvable 25 years ago.
I’ll always admire IRRI for maintaining its position on the
frontier of rice research using a combination of visionary leadership,
superb science, a dedicated staff and the foresight to forgo research
better done in collaboration with national programs.
I’ve been gone for nearly 20 years, but feel very proud and
gratified when I learn of IRRI’s unique initiatives to incorporate
better nutrition and grain quality
into the rice grain and improve the inherent resistance of the rice
plant to diseases and insects. Are we making progress? Yes, definitely.
But with a growing population and anemic economic development in many
countries, IRRI is trying to hit a moving target. We haven’t won the
race against hunger and poverty yet! And, as a global issue, climate change and global warming
present an immense challenge for IRRI to reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions stemming from rice production. Fortunately or unfortunately,
IRRI will not run out of challenges during its second 50 years.
Alan
Early, IRRI agricultural engineer, 1977-83; currently chief technical
officer, Indonesia Aid Foundation
I think a real challenge is reaching the people who have not been
touched by the Green Revolution. I now live in Indonesia, three quarters
of the time. One- quarter of the time, I spend in Fort Collins,
Colorado. I’m affiliated with Colorado State University as an adjunct
professor. My newly found clients are farmers in the uplands of
Indonesia. I have an ongoing research and development activity with
farmers in the uplands. They’ve been basically left behind by their own
government in terms of extension services, in infrastructure, and so
forth. They have been left behind in the same way they have been unable
to receive benefits of $30 billion of irrigation investment in 30 years.
They are a forgotten part of the population and I’ve taken them on as a
client group for my Indonesia Aid Foundation,
for which I am the chief technical officer.
I come back to Colorado to
raise money and write proposals. I spend most of my time working on R&D
activities like my intensive rice garden
for upland farm families. These activities are filling in some of the
gaps, which I think are important and I feel are not really part of
IRRI’s terms of reference.
Bill
Smith,
IRRI editor, Communication and Publications Services, 1979-91
I think the biggest challenge is pretty much the lack of funding that
all the institutes are feeling. Another thing that was true 12, 15, and
25 years ago is that population is still growing and, as it does, land
comes out of production. Even though yields can go up to increase
production, they don’t seem to be keeping up.
Fertilizer and water, I
think, are going to be the biggest challenges that IRRI, or for that
matter any of the agricultural research institutes, will face and be
working on in the future.
I think IRRI has a lot to do in the future. It met challenges in the
first 50 years, but it will have even greater challenges in the next 50,
including climate change and water shortages, which are going to affect
agriculture, rice cultivation, and food production in our society.
I
will continue to provide whatever support necessary in terms of fund
raising and other things for IRRI so that the world gets the benefit of
IRRI’s work in the future.
Hugh
Murphy,
IRRIdirector for administration, 1974-85; later vice president,
administration, Winrock International
Funding is a major challenge and that’s unfortunate because IRRI is
immensely a good investment for the various donors. There is something
referred to in the trade as donor fatigue and I think that’s
unfortunate. Entrepreneurs, when they have a winning strategy, tend to
stick with it. IRRI has been certainly part of the winning strategy that
made a tremendous amount of difference to people around the world in
alleviating both poverty and hunger. But the donors get tired; they want
to do something new, something different. I would hope that the donor
community could say, “We’ll stick with this winning horse and keep on
with it.” So that, I think, that’s the major challenge.
The other challenge would be to continue encouraging the
best and the brightest rice scientists to join IRRI, to work with IRRI,
enjoy it, and benefit from that work, which I think they would. It’s a
challenge, not a problem. At this session where we are at right now [IRRI
Alumni Reunion, Davis, California, June 2006],
I am very pleased to read [IRRI’s] strategic plan and to see that the
staff recognizes this and is mobilizing to overcome these two issues,
staffing for the future and funding for the future.
There are several challenges, but first of all, I think, is to implement
or actually to achieve the changes that IRRI management has identified.
For instance, we identified that quality assurance needs particular
attention and, in the broader sense, risk management of the Institute.
Now, you might say, how can a successful institute not have had quality
assurance? Yes, we have produced quality research. But, in the meantime,
we must confess that there are areas that need improvement: documents
are not properly stored, data are not properly managed. We must
establish a system. This is one area that I have not attended to enough
during my tenure. We have to face this challenge.
Another challenge is that many NRS (nationally recruited staff)
feel that there is no mechanism in human resource management that allows
for their merit-based professional growth. Isn’t that strange after so
many years? We have to be brave to admit that there are such challenges.
So, let’s agree on identifying them for the Institute itself first, and
then, second, let’s mobilize the resources to achieve thegoals that we
have set for ourselves.
Alicia
(Antonio) Perdonand Ed Perdon, respectively, IRRI research assistant, chemistry,
1971-77; and IRRI assistant rice production specialist, rice production
training and research, 1969-76
Alicia:
I think IRRI should really keep up with basic research even if it is not
easily seen what the reward is. A lot of companies now are not paying
attention to [this aspect]. [Also] IRRI should continue to be a conduit
for the national [Filipino] staff so that they can have the same
experiences that we did, which were really wonderful. There’s really
nothing that can replace being mentored by respected scientists in their
field.
Ed:
I think IRRI should go back to doing production training and putting
more influence on governments to actually support production programs
because of the food crisis we have right now and the shrinking land area
for rice. Even with all these high-yielding varieties and all the
technologies that go with them, if there are no people who will bring
them out to where they have to be, then nothing is going to happen. So,
IRRI has to continue with its training program.
Iwao
Watanabe,
IRRI soil micro-biologist and leader of the soil microbiology
program, 1975-91
When IRRI was first established in 1960, no one believed that it would
continue for 50 years. At that time, the goal was to increase rice
production in Asian countries. This has primarily been achieved. Many
Asian countries achieved self-sufficiency during the 1980s or early
1990s. Then doubt comes as to what should be the future role of IRRI.
Of
course, its first role is to maintain and keep genetic resources.
Otherwise, there is no reliable international organization to oversee
such important work. That should be the major task.
What I see on the challenge of IRRI relates pretty much to my career
moving from rice to soybeans, on which I spent approximately 21 years
following my work on rice. The soybean industry has been driven
primarily by the private sector. I see rice continuing to be driven
pretty much by the public sector. IRRI has worked with the public sector
through government agencies and various groups and has protected the
availability of germplasm to everybody.
What I see is the biggest
challenge is to bring in the private sector and all of its investment in
resources and money and to not compromise the free access to the
germplasm and other technologies. But I do think that the rice industry
and the private sector have to step forward and do much more to support
IRRI and other activities associated with it.
When I was working at IRRI, the idea was that IRRI might close
down after 25 years because it would have completed its mission. So, as
the transition has been taking place, clearly it has been shown that,
over the past 20 years, it’s important to continue. Adjusting to the new
changes is something that’s been interesting to watch.
IRRI has a very key role to play and has to continue to refine
what its goals and policies are to capture more funding. Funding is the
biggest constraint that IRRI faces right now and that’s kind of a
paradox because, when I look at the soybean industry, there is all kind
of money pouring into soybean research. Somehow, the rice industry has
to learn from what’s happening with soybeans, corn, and some of the
other major crops and tap into some of the private-sector money that is
available.
Hmmm…tough question. I continue to be associated with aspects of the
CGIAR and I suspect this applies to IRRI as well as to other
international institutes that I have visited. The CGIAR has become
terribly bureaucratized. I think the superstructure above the
scientists’ level has only grown, not at the stations so much, although
that probably might have happened to some extent, but really off-station
in the superstructure that governs the CGIAR. I believe it has become
extraordinarily cumbersome. It is not induced by scientists who serve on
the ground, as in our time, but by others who come in to administer the
system from the standpoint of accountability, good rules of operation,
business practices, and governance. It has only resulted in more and
more meetings and more and more people. Very often the people, as good
as they are, didn’t come through the system at the scientist level. I
believe that’s one of the biggest challenges. [Note: the CGIAR is
currently undergoing change management.]
At the same time, I don’t think the CGIAR has been able to
develop a true constituency that goes to bat for it where funds come
from. In 1994, I joined Texas A&M University.
I went to a meeting that was comprised of U.S. universities and CGIAR
representatives. I gave an impassioned talk about how, we, as
scientists, need to understand where the money comes from and how we
need to create a consciousness among the broader constituency of
taxpayers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia who are paying for the system. I
can remember one particular director general saying to me, “Ed, we don’t
worry about the taxpayers. We don’t worry about where the money comes
from; we worry only about how best to spend that money for good
research. The money comes, if you do good research.” But I think, in
recent years, we’ve learned that this philosophy does not persist. We do
now need to worry about constituencies.
I’m not sure if the CGIAR can meet all the challenges. I’m not
sure if universities can meet all the challenges. I still feel very
passionate about what I feel has to be accomplished in the future. I
believe that the world has become more fractured and I’m not talking
simply politically. I believe that, organizationally, we have become
fractured. It is much harder to accomplish a goal as a community that we
used to be able to accomplish.
Today, I’m trying to work with the powers-that-be on the role
that agricultural technology plays in conflict. Most everywhere that I
work today in international agriculture for a university has either just
emerged from a period of conflict where we are trying to reconstruct
(including El Salvador, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Côte d'Ivoire,
Iraq) or sorry
to say conflict is imminent.
I don’t believe we understand very well the role of agricultural
technology in conflict. When there’s conflict, it is often relegated to
the political scientists, the diplomats, and the anthropologists (who
look at religion and other facets of ethnicity) to look for the sources
of conflict and ways to resolve conflict. I believe that agricultural
technology is one of the most powerful tools that we have for preventing
conflict, for supporting families and communities, to survive conflict,
and to rebuild communities and economic systems following conflict. But,
unfortunately, I don’t think we understand well enough the different
ways that agricultural technology can play those roles—and sometimes, in
fact, bring about the conflict in the first place or exacerbate
conflict. So, that’s one of the areas where I would like to see more and
more emphasis and investment for the future
John
Sheehy, head,
IRRI's Applied Photosynthesis and Systems Modeling Laboratory,
1995-2009
When you’ve been at IRRI as long as I have, you take the organization to
heart. The organization itself is wonderful. It provides scientists with
a fantastic platform that, without it, none of us could achieve the
things that we do. I have to say in brackets that, once you’re on the
platform, IRRI has a peculiar administrative behavior that seems to do
its utmost to sabotage the concept. But one does think about the future
of IRRI.
IRRI is an Asian organization.
The Asian countries are developing in terms of wealth, power, and their
science. Their performance is growing and investments are increasing,
such as in China, which is emerging as big player in the biological
sciences. India is the same. So, what role does IRRI have? Can IRRI
compete? Can it remain significant? These are interesting questions.
I think that we have to look at
its title first. IRRI is an International Rice Research Institute. So,
it has to maintain its international nature. It has to be about
research. It has to be able to command the respect of scientists
throughout the world. Scientists have to look at IRRI, at any time, and
say this is an organization that has a lot to offer when we discuss food
production for the major part of the world’s population. Now, how does
it do that with such a small staff and a budget running around $50
million a year compared to the budgets of China, India, Japan, and of
other countries? Again, that’s an interesting question.
I think crucial to it is being
bold. I think IRRI has to be bold. It has to be strategic in its
thinking. It has to tackle big problems of significance. I think it
always has to have a cutting edge component to its work. It also has to
be able to focus the energy and intellects of people in advanced
institutions around the world on real world problems. It has to give
people the opportunity to use their science in a coupled manner to crack
problems of great significance, whatever those problems are. Now, it can
only do that if it has a reputation, a solid reputation, of intellectual
ability and solid achievement.
IRRI is not about fertilizer
management, not about water management, it’s about bigger issues than
that. It has to be, in the future, whatever branch of activities you’re
thinking of, be it social sciences, be it molecular biology; it has to
be out there with the leading thinkers.
Climate change
is a massively
important problem as we move forward. IRRI has a tough job in the area
of climate change because, unlike climate change scientists in general,
who think one hundred years from now or some who even think longer like
a thousand years from now. IRRI has to think about 50 years from now.
How will these things be affecting the livelihood of farmers and the
population of Asia? So, that’s the difficult problem and it requires
great thought prior to any accomplishment.
So, moving forward, I think
IRRI has to ensure that it is seen as an intellectually vibrant,
exciting place—the kind of place where somebody from the
Califorina Institute of Technology,
MIT,
Cambridge
wants to come, to visit, to share a problem with somebody who is here.
It also has to remember that its mission is to help people to provide a
better life for themselves and their families. So, it also has this
delivery component in its work. I think it’s got to manage, some way, to
balance this so that, in addition to creating new products and new
ideas, it also has the mechanisms to transfer them. Now, how it balances
those two components going forward is going to be the challenge. But it
has to be an organization that everybody wants to work with. It has to
be seen as excellent and uttered in the same breath as Cambridge,
Harvard,
and other outstanding
organizations. It cannot be complacent and must carry on being brave and
it has to continue to struggle to remain at the cutting edge.
IRRI's greatest challenge
is to continue its pre-eminence in scientific research.
It will not be easy to continue the tradition. The
current economic climate is likely to be with us for
years to come. So, adaptation will be the hallmark of
the Institute's endeavors in the years to come.
