7/9/86 plenary - Joint session with AUSUDIAP, 8 pm

DEVELOPMENT · .

. ASSISTANCE:

.

·YESTERDAY,. TODAY .

·AND· TOMORROW

U.S. DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE: YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOKORROV

by

Robert D. Havener, President Vinrock International Institute

for Agricultural Development

Presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Association of U.S. University Directors of International Agricultural Programs (AUSUDIAP), July 8-10, 1986. Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

INTRODUCTION

I am very grateful to Don Isleib and the organ1z1ng committee for g1v1ng me the opportunity to participate in this joint meeting of AUSUDIAP with the 25th Anniversary National Seminar on Future Directions of the Peace Corps and to discuss with you the evolution of development assistance.

It has been my privilege to observe in a first-hand way much of the

United States' modern history on this subject. I began my career in international agriculture in 1964 at the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development, in the village of Camilla, where I was a member of a technical-assistance team from Michigan State University that was carrying out an institutional development project funded by . the Ford Foundation. Members of the "Pak-1" Peace Corps group shared our housing compound and our breakfast table on most Sundays. Those were days of great learning for a young man from a rural village in the Appalachian region of Ohio. For the next 12 years, I was an agricultural program officer for the Ford Foundation, first in Asia and later in the Middle East. Then I spent 7 years as Director General of the International Center for Maize and Vheat Improvement in Mexico. My current challenge is to merge three important development-assistance organizations into a new and even more effective unit. Each of these vantage points has provided me with particular views -- biases, perhaps -- of the develop-ment process.

YESTERDAY

Development assistance is not new. It probably began in Mesopotamia

when some woman, who had convinced her nomadic husband to settle down in the Tigris-Euphrates Delta, shared some of her newly found wheat seed with her neighbors. Similar events probably occurred in Asia with the sharing of rice seed and in Africa with the sharing of sorghum and millet seed; but none of these events were recorded. Of course, there is a vast history of development activities and accomplishments sponsored by religious and other Private Voluntary Organizations; and governments have sponsored military-assistance and capital-support projects. I will not attempt here to cover those programs. ·

Instead, I shall focus on formal efforts to assist agricultural develop-ment that are funded by the U.S. governdevelop-ment, U.S.-supported intergovern-mental agencies, multilateral development banks, and large philanthropic foundations. I will attempt to cover with a broad brush the roles of U.S. universities, government agencies, and other public and private technical-assistance agencies as instruments of change. Formal govern-mental development assistance programs are really quite recent in ong1n. These efforts have their genesis with the creation of the United Nations and its specialized agencies · in 1945-46, the initiation of the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist war-ravaged Europe, and the declaration of a U.S. policy of technical assistance and economic aid contained in the Point Four Program promulgated by President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address in 1949.

\le have learned and unlearned much about development in the past 40 years. The period between 1945 and 1985 was one of dreams and disillus-ionment. The experiences of \lorld \lar II and the spectacular success of the Marshall Plan confirmed the "can-do" attitude of the American people. There was great public support for helping our less fortunate neighbors in the newly independent developing countries. Americans believed that our technologies and institutions were fitting models for progress in Third \lorld countries -- if those countries accepted our models, they would share our abundant life and, incidentally, our

poli-tical and economic values.

Our dreams led the great U.S. agricultural universities, assisted by Point Four-USAID funding, to invest 35 years in creating and nurturing many sister institutions in developing countries. These institutions were founded on the principle that research, education, and extension should be closely linked within a single institution. \le took for granted that such institutions would be practical and would help solve problems . . The landmark Title XII legislation of 1975 that aimed at strengthening the U.S. university community to help developing countries prevent famine and alleviate hunger reinforced and reinvigorated this commitment. The Title XII legislation also emphasized research, acknowledging that a two-way flow of research results would directly benefit Americans.

Somewhat earlier, the Rockefeller Foundation began a far-sighted effort in 1943, at the request of the Mexican government and encouraged by the U.S. government, to provide agricultural development assistance to Mexico. It is sometimes forgotten that, at the time, this program was very successful. It later provided the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations with a model for creating, in 1960, the first International Agricultural Research Center: the International Rice Research Institute. Thirteen similar centers were to follow under the auspices of the foundations and, later, of the 43-member Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). These international research ·and

training centers were to play a vital role in subsequent development. An event that is receiving special recognition on this occasion is the creation of the Peace Corps in 1961 -- truly the stuff of dreams~ Its

purpose was "the provision of qualified men and women to interested countries to help those countries meet their needs for trained manpower, the promotion of a better understanding of the American people on the part of the people served and the promotion of a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people." Measured by that yardstick, the Peace Corps has been an outstanding success. The 30,000 volunteers and employees who have been associated with the Peace Corps during the past 25 years have contributed much to our neighbors in developing countries; but I believe that, through the impact of the returning volunteers, the United States has gained more than it has given. Today, former volunteers compose the \lho's \lho of development-assistance programs. Each new administration (albeit sometimes with certain reservations) has reasserted the value of the Peace Corps. I am pleased to see that the current administration is providing strong backing to the Peace Corps under the able leadership of Ms. Loret Miller-Ruppe.

So, the development v~s1onaries of the last 35 years led U.S. uni ver-sities to establish a new university in the Punjab of India, the foundations to build a new research institute in the rice fields of the Philippines, and Peace Corps volunteers to improve human nutrition, water supplies, and rural schools in African villages. These examples were repeated to some degree on every continent and in many countries in the developing world; but somehow ignorance, poverty, and hunger were not conquered.

In retrospect, we were naively optimistic in our expectations~ Ve did not foresee that a minimal improvement in health services for the world's poor would lead to an explosion of the global population from less than 2.5 billion people in 1945 to nearly 5 billion today. Ve did not predict the massive, worldwide diversion of financial resources from development ·objectives to armaments. And we did not understand suffi-ciently that technologies and institutions must be adapted if they are to fit new environments.

Both theoreticians and practitioners of development had much to learn . The leaders of the newly developing countries tended to choose as their models the experiences of developed countries that had industrialized earlier; that is, they pursued large-scale development projects with heavy emphasis on industrialization. Vhile populations increased rapidly, little attention was given to the agricultural sector and, in many countries, per capita food production declined. Perhaps not surprisingly, U.S. presidents and Congress frequently changed both the quantity of aid available and rules of the game during the past 35 years. This has been disrupting to U.S. government agencies, the executing organizations, and our intended beneficiaries in developing countries. No doubt, these factors contributed to our disillusionment. Critics of development assistance have searched for and found examples of expensive projects that failed. Though it was modest, the "brain drain" did occur. Some of the institutions we helped to create have indeed become ivory towers, politicized, or unresponsive to their publics. The machines we introduced had to be maintained, but sometimes requisite maintenance skills or spare parts were not available. · New cultivars of wheat and rice did not respond to equity concerns. Governments often were unable to finance educational and research institutions adequately after external donors withdrew. In .Africa, climatic and political factors conspired to produce great human tragedy in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

TODAY

Yogi Berra once observed that "you have to start from where you're at." Since I agree with him, let me spend the next few minutes describing where I think we are.

Vi th such vivid evidence of failure, it is easy to lose sight of the immense progress that has been achieved. Research, education, and extension organizations have been created or improved in many developing

countries; contagious diseases have been brought under control; and, for most people, supplies of food are increasing.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has recently completed an exhaustive review of the likely impact of the technologies and training provided by the institutes that compose the system. As expected, the substantial impact of the new varieties of rice, wheat, and corn was verified. The good news was the wide array of improved technologies that are in the pipeline and are beginning to be applied on farmers' fields in developing countries.

In Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East a large cadre of university-educated teachers, officials, and politicians, many with foreign degrees, are now in positions of resppnsibili ty and are leading their countries toward sounder economic planning and more effective government organization. Such changes are late but beginning in Africa. At a recent meeting of the Organization of African Unity, the heads of state proclaimed that education and agriculture must receive the highest development priori ties. Donors, including the U.S. government, have recognized that development takes time as well as money. Expectations on both sides have become more realistic, and the models of the planner and theoretician now fit reality better than earlier versions.

It is clear that the leaders of most developing countries continue to want academic and technological contact with their U.S. counterparts and organizations. Even when development priorities change and donor funds are restricted, they actively seek to maintain old contacts. Likewise, the U.S. academic community, I believe, remains committed to a range of exchanges intended to benefit the citizens of developing countries. On the negative side, it should be noted that among the 17 western

industrialized countries that make up the Development Assistance Committee, only Switzerland gives a lower proportion of its gross national product for development assistance than the one-quarter of one percent currently contributed by the United States. Some argue that we are unlikely to maintain even this modest level. Clearly, strong forces encourage greater domestic competition . for available tax revenues:

As you know, rural America is under immense stress. The sharp decline in the value of agricultural land has eroded the tax base by 50 percent or more in some rural areas. Rural credit institutions, both public and private, are in deep financial trouble. Agricul-tural surpluses and lower world commodity prices are forcing land and labor out of agricultural production, and the impact on farm-supply firms is devastating. "Real farmers" -- good, hard-working people -- are going broke and selling out in front of television cameras while taxpayers grow more worried about the mounting costs of agricultural subsidies and storing surpluses. American

agricul-tural producers fear that foreign aid is helping their potential competitors-- at . their expense.

Americans are concerned about unemployment, caused in part by failures of agricultural industries, while firms that need unskilled labor are relocating to other countries.

Environmentalists believe that some early development-assistance projects were destructive to the environment, creating short-term gains in productivity at the expense of long-term, sustained production.

Recent publicity about the personal greed and excessive conspicuous consumption of the ruling families of developing countries have increased public suspicion that much aid money never reaches the needy. It matters little that the squandered funds probably came from trade, not aid. ~hat matters is the appearance that Americans care more about the country's poverty than do its own leaders.

The tough decisions necessary to balance the U.S. budget may affect the allocation for development assistance. At least in the short run, most government funds for development assistance are likely to be channeled to countries that have a high strategic importance in American foreign policy, such as Egypt, Israel, and Pakistan.

For these reasons, the American public's support for general, direct, government-to-government development assistance is likely to be tested. In all probability, in the near future, the purposes and processes of U.S. development assistance again will be examined carefully. The outcome of such a review is difficult to predict. My guess is that strategic development assistance will be maintained at near-existing levels and that the value of humanitarian and development aid will be reaffirmed. The result may be a more careful targeting of aid through intermediary groups in smaller amounts and on a more sustained basis. Such a change might focus on higher-priority educational and research activities and smaller-scale, grassroots development projects. This, in turn, would call for a greater involvement of the U.S. university community, a greater need for Peace-Corps-type programs, and more involvement of American Private Voluntary Organizations.

TOHORROV

~hen Don Isleib invited me to address you on this occasion, he assured

me that you are interested in knowing more about our new organization,

~inrock International Institute for Agricultural Development. I trust

that he was correct. Because ~inrock is a new organization that was

created specifically to address the development challenges of the future, I shall describe ~inrock as part of tomorrow's evolution.

The mission of ~inrock International is to help alleviate human hunger

and poverty through agricultural development. ~inrock was created on

July 1, 1985, through the merger of three important development organi-zations: the Agricultural Development Council (AID/C), the Inter-national Agricultural Development Service (lADS), and the ~inrock International Livestock Research and Tr~ining Center (~ILRTC). These

three organizations shared a common heritage stemming from the philan-thropic traditions of the Rockefeller family. The purpose of the merger was to create a new organization to address long-term development issues -- one that would combine the strengths of its three predecessors: A/D/C' s competence in social sciences and human resource development, !ADS's experience in crop and soil sciences and research administration, and ~ILRTC's expertise in livestock-based farming systems. An endowment of about 40 million dollars was created to ensure the economic viability and programatic autonomy and flexibility of the new organization. Like universities, we have been classified as a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization for public educational and charitable purposes, and we have been designated as a bonafide Private Voluntary Organization by the U.S. government. ~e have a professional staff of 125 scientists and

administrators, about 75% of whom are working in 55 development projects in 20 countries. ~inrock International has an annual operating budget, including contract-project funds, of about 25 million dollars. ~e have about 100 administrative and support staff among our headquarters in Arkansas and our offices in ~ashington, D.C., and Bangkok, Thailand. In

the last year, we organized about 200 short-term consultancies to over 25 developing countries.

Our human resource development program includes a large degree and nondegree training program. Currently we manage 260 degree candidates in 38 U.S. and 14 foreign universities. ~inrock does not intend to organize or conduct educational programs that can be handled effectively by other organizations. ~e actively seek partners in human resource development programs, and we have memoranda of understanding with 40 U.S. universities.

~e do not intend to become heavily involved in experimentation. The

experimental data we help to generate and the technologies we help to develop will, by and large, belong to our clients and cooperators, including universities, the IARCs, and private-sector firms.

Our Technical Cooperation Division plans and manages our participation in development projects. It draws upon services and technical staff throughout the organization as needed and a group of senior associates who serve as adjunct staff members. ~e also have a group of individual consultants, mostly drawn from U.S. universities, who carry out assign-ments as appropriate.

~inrock's Planning and Analysis Division has three important functions.

This division has been given the challenge of becoming our institutional memory. The staff are expected to analyze our experience in conducting development projects and help us -- and others, we hope ~- learn from the process. They help us explore new areas for potential institutional involvement or expansion. They also synthesize and analyze information and data from many sources to guide institutional development programs and provide information for our agricultural-policy program.

As we see it, our job is to seek financial support and partners to pursue mutually accepted development goals. Our core staff will remain small, and it will continue to be composed of individuals who, while having specific subject-matter skills, can synthesize across

disci-plines. Ve hope to be knowledgeable and sensitive in analyzing, planning, organ1z1ng, and managing a modest portion of the world's development-assistance resources; therefore, we must look to the university community and the International Agricultural Research Centers within the CGIAR system to conduct most educational and training programs; provide new basic-research findings; develop new technologies (sometimes with our assistance); and provide expert, short-term consultants to address specific technical questions.

Over the past year, I have been learning to manage our new organization and to position it operationally among the actors in development assistance. In the process, I have developed certain beliefs that guide my planning. For what they are worth, let me sum up my biases as . follows:

As stated earlier, I believe that humanitarian concern for our less fortunate neighbors and the recognition that their economic growth is good for the global economy will assure the continuation of substantial U.S. funding for development assistance.

U.S. government funding probably will become more closely tied to strategic political considerations, and there may be a tendency to classify more countries as "AID graduates." The U.S. educational, research, and political establishments must look for new ways to fund scientific and scholarly exchanges between these AID graduates and our institutions, and these exchanges will more likely be on an equal-partnership basis. The need for advanced-degree training will continue, and the demand will expand for post-doctoral and mid-career visiting scholar and nondegree program opportunities in

u.s.

Vhile development assistance will continue to require resident expatriots, the number of foreigners per project will decline, and the resident foreigners will tend to serve more in liason .and expeditor capaciiies rather than as advisors.

More development-assistance funds will be loans instead of grants, and the local nationals will have more control over the use of these funds. As less money is spent for long-term resident expatriots, more will be used for experts on very specific, short-term assign-ments. The demand for expert assistance and scientific exchange will shift toward such fields as information-management sciences and biotechnology. More consultants will be from developing countries. Future agricultural and rural-development projects will need to be more sensitive to the environment and more concerned with issues such as resource-use efficiency. Projects that deal with agro-forestry are likely to become more attractive to the U.S. govern-ment, and those that deal with subjects such as soybean production will be less likely to receive funding.

If grants to most developing countries become smaller and public concern about corruption remains high, a much larger portion of U.S. development-assistance funding, in the interests of efficiency,

..

, effectiveness, and integrity, will be channeled through organiza-tions such as the Peace Corps, U.S. universities, private-sector firms, and Private Voluntary Organizations.

~ithin the next 15 years, over one billion people will join us on this

earth. Under the most optimistic scenario, the great majority of them will be living in developing countries and will be threatened by ignorance, poverty, and hunger. If, together, we tell their story clearly and do our job well, I am convinced the American public and their institutions will respond generously to make life for these people a bit better and more productive.

The staff of ~inrock International and I look forward to wor~ing with you to meet that challenge.

U.S. DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE: YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOKORROV

by

Robert D. Havener, President Vinrock International Institute

for Agricultural Development

Presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Association of U.S. University Directors of International Agricultural Programs (AUSUDIAP), July 8-10, 1986. Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

INTRODUCTION

I am very grateful to Don Isleib and the organizing committee for giving me the opportunity to participate in this joint meeting of AUSUDIAP with the 25th Anniversary National Seminar on Future Directions of the Peace Corps and to discuss with you ·the evolution of development assistance. It has been my privilege to observe in a first-hand way much of the United States' modern history on this subject. I began my career in international agriculture in 1964 at the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development, in the village of Camilla, where I was a member of a technical-assistance team from Michigan State University that was carrying out an institutional development project funded by . the Ford Foundation. Members of the "Pak-1" Peace Corps group shared our housing compound and our breakfast table on most Sundays. Those were days of great learning for a young man from a rural village in the Appalachian region of Ohio. For the next 12 years, I was an agricultural program officer for the Ford Foundation, first in Asia and later in the Middle East. Then I spent 7 years as Director General of the International Center for Maize and Yheat Improvement in Mexico. My current challenge is to merge three important development-assistance organizations into a new and even more effective unit. Each of these vantage points has provided me with particular views -- biases, perhaps -- of the develop-ment process.

YESTERDAY

Development assistance is not new. It probably began in Mesopotamia when some woman, who had convinced her nomadic husband to settle down in the Tigris-Euphrates Delta, shared some of her newly found wheat seed with her neighbors. Similar events probably occurred in Asia with the sharing of rice seed and in Africa with the sharing of sorghum and millet seed; but none of these events were recorded. Of course, there is a vast history of development activities and accomplishments sponsored by religious and other Private Voluntary Organizations; and governments have sponsored military-assistance and capital-support projects. I will not attempt here to cover those programs. ·

Instead, I shall focus on formal efforts to assist agricultural develop-ment that are funded by the U.S. governdevelop-ment, U.S.-supported intergovern-mental agencies, multilateral development banks, and large philanthropic foundations. I will attempt to cover with a broad brush the roles of U.S. universities, government agencies, and other public and private technical-assistance agencies as instruments of change. Formal govern-mental development assistance programs are really quite recent in ong1n. These efforts have their genesis with the creation of the United Nations and its specialized agencies · in 1945-46, the initiation of the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist war-ravaged Europe, and the declaration of a U.S. policy of technical assistance and economic aid contained in the Point Four Program promulgated by President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address in 1949.

lie have learned and unlearned much about development in the past 40 years. The period between 1945 and 1985 was one of dreams and

disillus-ionment. The experiences of llorld liar II and the spectacular success of the Marshall Plan confirmed the "can-do" attitude of the American people. There was great public support for helping our less fortunate neighbors in the newly independent developing countries. Americans believed that our technologies and institutions were fitting models for progress in Third llorld countries -- if those countries accepted our models, they would share our abundant life and, incidentally, our

poli-tical and economic values.

Our dreams led the great U.S. agricultural universities, assisted by Point Four-USAID funding, to invest 35 years in creating and nurturing many sister institutions in developing countries. These institutions were founded on the principle that research, education, and extension should be closely linked within a single institution. lie took for granted that such institutions would be practical and would help solve problems . . The landmark Title XII legislation of 1975 that aimed at strengthening the U.S. university community to help developing countries prevent famine and alleviate hunger reinforced and reinvigorated this commitment. The Title XII legislation also emphasized research, acknowledging that a two-way flow of research results would directly benefit Americans.

Somewhat earlier, the Rockefeller Foundation began a far-sighted effort in 1943, at the request of the Mexican government and encouraged by the U.S. government, to provide agricultural development assistance to Mexico. It is sometimes forgotten that, at the time, this program was very successful. It later provided the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations with a model for creating, in 1960, the first International Agricultural Research Center: the International Rice Research Institute. Thirteen similar centers were to follow under the auspices of the foundations and, later, of the 43-member Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). These international research and

training centers were to play a vital role in subsequent development. An event that is receiving special recognition on this occasion is the _creation of the Peace Corps in 1961 --truly the stuff of dreams~ Its

purpose was "the provision of qualified men and women to interested countries to help those countries meet their needs for trained manpower, the promotion of a better understanding of the American people on the part of the people served and the promotion of a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people." Measured by that yardstick, the Peace Corps has been an outstanding success. The 30,000 volunteers and employees who have been associated with the Peace Corps during the past 25 years have contributed much to our neighbors in developing countries; but I believe that, through the impact of the returning volunteers, the United States has gained more than it has given. Today, former volunteers compose the llho's llho of development-assistance programs. Each new administration (albeit sometimes with certain reservations) has reasserted the value of the Peace Corps. I am pleased to see that the current administration is providing strong backing to the Peace Corps under the able leadership of Ms. Loret Miller-Ruppe.

So, the development v~s1onaries of the last 35 years led U.S. univer-sities to establish a new university in the Punjab of India, the foundations to build a new research institute in the rice fields of the Philippines, and Peace Corps volunteers to improve human nutrition, water supplies, and rural schools in African villages. These examples were repeated to some degree on every continent and in many countries in the developing world; but somehow ignorance, poverty, and hunger were not conquered.

In retrospect, we were naively optimistic in our expectations~ Ve did not foresee that a minimal improvement in health services for the world's poor would lead to an explosion of the global population from less than 2.5 billion people in 1945 to nearly 5 billion today. Ve did not predict the massive, worldwide diversion of financial resources from development objectives to armaments. And we did not understand suffi-ciently that technologies and institutions must be adapted if they are to fit new environments.

Both theoreticians and practitioners of development had much to learn. The leaders of the newly developing countries tended to choose as their models the experiences of developed countries that had industrialized earlier; that is, they pursued large-scale development projects with heavy emphasis on industrialization. Vhile populations increased rapidly, little attention was given to the agricultural sector and, in many countries, per capita food production declined. Perhaps not surprisingly, U.S. presidents and Congress frequently changed both the quantity of aid available and rules of the game during the past 35 years. .This has been disrupting to U.S. government agencies, the executing organizations, and our intended beneficiaries in developing countries. No doubt, these factors contributed to our disillusionment. Critics of development assistance have searched for and found examples of expensive projects that failed. Though it was modest, the "brain drain" did occur. Some of the institutions we helped to create have indeed become ivory towers, politicized, or unresponsive to their publics. The machines we introduced had to be maintained, but sometimes requisite maintenance skills or spare parts were not available. New cultivars of wheat and rice did not respond to equity concerns. Governments often were unable to finance educational and research

institutions adequately after external donors withdrew. In Africa, climatic and political factors conspired to produce great human tragedy in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

TODAY

Yogi Berra once observed that "you have to start from where you're at." Since I agree with him, let me spend the next few minutes describing where I think we are.

Vi th such vivid evidence of failure, it is easy to lose sight of the immense progress that has been achieved. Research, education, and extension organizations have been created or improved in many developing

countries; contagious diseases have been brought under control; and, for most people, supplies of food are increasing.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has recently completed an exhaustive review of the likely impact of the technologies and training provided by the institutes that compose the system. As expected, the substantial impact of the new varieties of rice, wheat, and corn was verified. The good news was the wide array of improved technologies that are in the pipeline and are beginning to be applied on farmers' fields in developing countries.

In Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East a large cadre of university-educated teachers, officials, and politicians, many with foreign degrees, are now in positions of resppnsibili ty and are leading their countries toward sounder economic planning and more effective government organization. Such changes are late but beginning in Africa. At a recent meeting of the Organization of African Unity, the heads of state proclaimed that education and agriculture must receive the highest development priori ties. Donors, including the U.S. government, have recognized that development takes time as well as money. Expectations on both sides have become more realistic, and the models of the planner and theoretician now fit reality better than earlier versions.

It is clear that the leaders of most developing countries continue to want academic and technological contact with their U.S. counterparts and organizations. Even when development priorities change and donor funds are restricted, they actively seek to maintain old contacts. Likewise, the U.S. academic community, I believe, remains committed to a range of exchanges intended to benefit the citizens of developing countries. On the negative side, it should be noted that among the 17 western industrialized countries that make up the Development Assistance Committee, only Switzerland gives a lower proportion of its gross national product for development assistance than the one-quarter of one percent currently contributed by the United States. Some argue that we are unlikely to maintain even this modest level. Clearly, strong forces encourage greater domestic competition . for available tax revenues:

As you know, rural America is under immense stress. The sharp decline in the value of agricultural land has eroded the tax base by 50 percent or more in some rural areas. Rural credit institutions, both public and private, are in deep financial trouble. Agricul-tural surpluses and lower world commodity prices are forcing land and labor out of agricultural production, and the impact on farm-supply firms is devastating. "Real farmers" -- good, hard-working people -- are going broke and selling out in front of television cameras while taxpayers grow more worried about the mounting costs of agricultural subsidies and storing surpluses. American agricul-tural producers fear that foreign aid is helping their potential competitors -- at . their expense.

Americans are concerned about unemployment, caused in part by failures of agricultural industries, while firms that need unskilled labor are relocating to other countries.

Environmentalists believe that some early development-assistance projects were destructive to the environment, creating short-term gains in productivity at the expense of long-term, sustained production.

Recent publicity about the personal greed and excessive conspicuous consumption of the ruling families of developing countries have increased public suspicion that much aid money never reaches the needy. It rna t ters little that the squandered funds probably came

from trade, not aid. ~hat matters is the appearance that Americans care more about the country's poverty than do its own leaders.

The tough decisions necessary to balance the U.S. budget may affect the allocation for development assistance. At least in the short run, most government funds for development assistance are likely to be channeled to countries that have a high strategic importance in American foreign policy, such as Egypt, Israel, and Pakistan.

For these reasons, the American public's support for general, direct, government-to-government development assistance is likely to be tested. In all probability, in the near future, the purposes and processes of U.S. development assistance again will be examined carefully. The outcome of such a review is difficult to predict. My guess is that strategic development assistance will be maintained at near-existing levels and that the value of humanitarian and development aid will be reaffirmed. The result may be a more careful targeting of aid through intermediary groups in smaller amounts and on a more sustained basis. Such a change might focus on higher-priority educational and research activities and smaller-scale, grassroots development projects. This, in turn, would call for a greater involvement of the U.S. university community, a greater need for Peace-Corps-type programs, and more involvement of American Private Voluntary Organizations.

TOKORROV

~hen Don Isleib invited me to address you on this occasion, he assured

me that you are interested in knowing more about our new organization,

~inrock International Institute for Agricultural Development. I trust

that he was correct. Because Yinrock is a new organization that was created specifically to address the development challenges of the future, I shall describe Yinrock as part of tomorrow's evolution.

The mission of Yinrock International is to help alleviate human hunger and poverty through agricultural development. Yinrock was created on July 1, 1985, through the merger of three important development organi-zations: the Agricultural Development Council (AID/C), the Inter-national Agricultural Development Service (IADS), and the ~inrock

three organizations shared a common heritage stemming from the philan-thropic traditions of the Rockefeller family. The purpose of the merger was to create a new organization to address long-term development issues -- one that would combine the strengths of its three predecessors: A/D/C' s competence in social sciences and human resource development, lADS's experience in crop and soil sciences and research administration,

and ~ILRTC's expertise in livestock-based farming systems. An endowment

of about 40 million dollars was created to ensure the economic viability and programatic autonomy and flexibility of the new organization. Like universities, we have been classified as a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization for public educational and charitable purposes, and we have been designated as a bonafide Private Voluntary Organization by the U.S. government. ~e have a professional staff of 125 scientists and

administrators, about 75% of whom are working in 55 development projects in 20 countries. ~inrock International has an annual operating budget,

including contract-project funds, of about 25 million dollars. ~e have

about 100 administrative and support staff among our headquarters in Arkansas and our offices in ~ashington, D.C., and Bangkok, Thailand. In

the last year, we organized about 200 short-term consultancies to over 25 developing countries.

Our human resource development program includes a large degree and nondegree training program. Currently we manage 260 degree candidates in 38 U.S. and 14 foreign UQiversities. ~inrock does not intend to organize or conduct educational programs that can be handled effectively by other organizations. ~e actively seek partners in human resource development programs, and we have memoranda of understanding with 40 U.S. universities.

~e do not intend to become heavily involved in experimentation. The experimental data we help to generate and the technologies we help to develop will, by and large, belong to our clients and cooperators, including universities, the !ARCs, and private-sector firms.

Our Technical Cooperation Division plans and manages our participation in development projects. It draws upon services and technical staff throughout the organization as needed and a group of senior associates who serve as adjunct staff members. ~e also have a group of individual consultants, mostly drawn from U.S. universities, who carry out assign-ments as appropriate.

~inrock's Planning and Analysis Division has three important functions.

This division has been given the challenge of becoming our institutional memory. The staff are expected to analyze our experience in conducting development projects and help us -- and others, we hope ~- learn from the process. They help us explore new areas for potential institutional involvement or expansion. They also synthesize and analyze information and data from many sources to guide institutional development programs and provide information for our agricultural-policy program.

As we see it, our job is to seek financial support and partners to pursue mutually accepted development goals. Our core staff will remain small, and it will continue to be composed of individuals who, while having specific subject-matter skills, can synthesize across

disci-plines. Ye hope to be knowledgeable and sensitive in analyzing, planning, organ1z1ng, and managing a modest portion of the world's development-assistance resources; therefore, we must look to the university community and the International Agricultural Research Centers within the CGIAR system to conduct most educational and training programs; provide new basic-research findings; develop new technologies (sometimes with our · assistance); and provide expert, short-term consultants to address specific technical questions.

Over the past year, I have been learning to manage our new organization and to position it operationally among the actors in development assistance. In the process, I have developed certain beliefs that guide my planning. For what they are worth, let me sum up my biases as . follows:

As stated earlier, I believe that humanitarian concern for our less fortunate neighbors and the recognition that their economic growth is good for the global economy will assure the continuation of substantial U.S. funding for development assistance.

U.S. government funding probably will become more closely tied to strategic political considerations, and there may be a tendency to classify more countries as "AID graduates." The U.S. educational, research, and political establishments must look for new ways to fund scientific and scholarly exchanges between these AID graduates and our institutions, and these exchanges will more likely be on an equal-partnership basis. The need for advanced-degree training will continue, and the demand will expand for post-doctoral and mid-career visiting scholar and nondegree program opportunities in U.S. institutions.

Yhile development assistance will continue to require resident expa trio ts, the number of foreigners per project will decline, and

the resident foreigners will tend to serve more in liason .and expeditor capaciiies rather than as advisors.

More development-assistance funds will be loans instead of grants, and the local nationals will have more control over the use of these funds. As less money is spent for long-term resident expatriots, more will be used for experts on very specific, short-term assign-ments. The demand for expert assistance and scientific exchange will shift toward such fields as information-management sciences and biotechnology. More consultants will be from developing countries. Future agricultural and rural-development projects will need to be more sensitive to the environment and more concerned with issues such as resource-use efficiency. Projects that deal with agro-forestry are likely to become more attractive to the U.S. govern-ment, and those that deal with subjects such as soybean production will be less likely to receive funding.

If grants to most developing countries become smaller and public concern about corruption remains high, a much larger portion of U.S. development-assistance funding, in the interests of efficiency,

effectiveness, and integrity, will be channeled through organiza-tions such as the Peace Corps, U.S. universities, private-sector firms, and Private Voluntary Organizations.

Yithin the next 15 years, over one billion people will join us on this earth. Under the most optimistic scenario, the great majority of them will be living in developing countries and will be threatened by ignorance, poverty, and hunger. If, together, we tell their story clearly and do our job well, I am convinced the American public and their institutions will respond generously to make life for these people a bit better and more productive.

The staff of Yinrock International and I look forward to wor~ing with you to meet that challenge.