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Randy Barker and Robert Herdt:
The trouble with you economists!

On a hot day in July 2009 on the campus of Cornell University, Randy Barker and Robert Herdt, former agricultural economists at the International Rice Research Institute (1966-78 and 1973-83, respectively), got together to reminisce about their days at IRRI and to reflect on the evolution of research in the social sciences at the Institute. Doing his homework ahead of this dialogue that I arranged, Dr. Barker wrote down some key recollections presented here. Interspersed in the text are selected video clips from the dialogue that embellish his notes. Immediately below is the full 1- hour and 16-minute informative and entertaining discussion.

My story begins in Los Baños [Philippines] in 1965. I had agreed to go to there with my family for two years as part of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture-Cornell Exchange Program (UPCO). Next door to the college was the newly established International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The Ford Foundation representative on the IRRI Board, Frosty Hill, had insisted that there be a position for an economist. So, in 1963, Vernon Ruttan was hired as IRRI’s first economist (at right in photo with me and Bob Herdt (left). But after two years, Ruttan decided to return to the States due to a medical problem with one of his children. Tom Weaver, at the time a graduate student under John Mellor at Cornell, agreed to accept the position. But Weaver was delayed in finishing his thesis. Thus, in mid-1966, Bob Chandler, the IRRI director general, offered me the position. IRRI and Cornell reached an agreement that I would work half time for each until the two years were up in 1967, after which I would be full time at IRRI.

The early years
Ruttan had laid a good foundation for research and had established contacts with economists elsewhere in the Philippines, particularly at the University of the Philippines School of Economics in Manila. Even after joining IRRI full time, I continued to teach one course a year at the College of Agriculture and an occasional course at the School of Economics, a good two-hour (or more) drive from Los Baños. There was method in my madness. Through teaching, I was able to identify promising graduate students to come to IRRI to do their thesis research with us.            
            When I joined IRRI in 1966, no one had ever heard of the place, and many at the College looked across the railroad tracks and over the fence and wondered if anything useful would ever come out of the fancy buildings and housing. It seemed like a fairly relaxed atmosphere. I joined the IRRI softball team. But the establishment of IRRI reflected growing concerns about food security in Asia. Bob Chandler kept a tight grip on the reigns and we had a sharply focused mission—increase rice production in Asia.
            In August 1966, we released IR8, the first of the so-called semidwarf varieties, and that changed everything. Joining IRRI was like buying a penny stock that suddenly took off. The big jump in the IRRI budget came in the 1970s when Nyle Brady was director general (see IRRI’s budget graph, 1960-2007). Due to the concerns about the consequences of the Green Revolution, there was even more money for the social sciences.
            I joined IRRI at a time when the agricultural scientists, such as Norm Borlaug, thought that economists were part of the problem, not part of the solution. The last thing they wanted was to have an economist dealing with policy issues. So, my first task was to build some bridges.

            Much of our research dealt with farm surveys. Loyd Johnson, head of IRRI’s Agricultural Engineering Department [1960-68], with the help of Stan Johnson, had initiated the “loop survey,” a frequent survey of rice farms along the national highway in Central Luzon to observe their farm practices, in particular, land preparation. Stan Johnson [1966-68]—and later Bart Duff [1970-90]—was the economist assigned to the Agricultural Engineering Department to work specifically on the economics of mechanization. Covering the same loop in 1966-67, we initiated a farm household survey. This survey has been conducted about every five years, even to this day, to track changes in farming practices, yields, costs, and returns.
            Also, in a number of years, we conducted an experiment on the experiment station. I argued with the administration that our objectives and experimental designs would be different from those of the agronomists, not the usual analysis of variance, but more points on the production function. One day, Bob Chandler, who had been out in the field with a visitor, called me in to his office and wanted to know why there were so many weeds in some of our plots. I said those were my low-input treatments, and he seemed to be satisfied. After a while, Ronnie Coffman, IRRI plant breeder [1971-81], coined the acronyms ZIP (zero input), LIP (low inputs), and HIP (high inputs), but they never caught on with the agronomists. Conducting experiments helped me to better understand the problems and to learn the tricks of the other scientists.
            Our outreach was aided and abetted by the Agricultural Development Council (ADC), which had social scientist staff members posted in several Asian countries. Its executive director, Art Mosher, is best remembered for his book, Getting Agriculture Moving: Essentials for Development and Modernization, published in 1966. He was succeeded by Vern Ruttan from 1974 to 1977. The ADC staff helped us in making contacts and organizing research with local social scientists throughout Asia.
            During this early period, I learned a lot from Loyd Johnson, an engineer with a broad range of research interests—mechanization, water management, farm survey, and experimental design. Johnson was one of the first staff members hired by IRRI in 1960 to develop the 80-hectare experiment station. In 1967, USAID gave a large grant to IRRI to work specifically on mechanization. A short time later, Johnson left IRRI for CIAT in Columbia. This left a big hole, particularly in the area of water management.
            When, in 1972, we had an opportunity to hire a second economist, we picked Tom Wickham, a student of Gil Levine in Agricultural Engineering at Cornell, who had a minor in economics. The engineers at IRRI were working on mechanization, but I figured that, if we were doing research on rice, we certainly should be doing research on water management. Wickham had done his thesis research in the Philippines as part of the UPCO exchange program. Water management research was in the Agricultural Economics Department for two or three years and then, under Wickham, developed into a separate department. Wickham later became the first director general of the International Irrigation Management Institute (IIMI now IWMI) established in Sri Lanka in 1984.
            The main objectives of an economics or social science department in the CGIAR should be twofold: to conduct research that meets the objectives of the institute, including interdisciplinary research and to maintain credibility in the profession, mainly through published research. It is a balancing act. After hiring Wickham, and with my own activities, I felt that we were becoming too inter-disciplinary. With the hiring of Bob Herdt and later Yujiro Hayami, we restored the balance. In mid-1973, I returned to Cornell for a year on sabbatical leave. Bob Herdt, still another of John Mellor’s students, was hired for that one year until I returned, and fortunately he decided to stay on for ten.

Constraints and consequences
We had two main projects in the department, “constraints” and “consequences.” Why weren’t some farmers adopting the technology? Who were the farmers benefiting from the technology? There was a good deal of discussion and research on “consequences” and a number of conferences on the pros and cons of the Green Revolution, both inside and outside of IRRI. And as pointed out earlier, there was adequate funding. Research on consequences produced some interesting results. Critics of the Green Revolution argued that only the large farmers and land owners would adopt and benefit. We found that the rate of adoption was just as high or even higher among small farmers and tenant farmers. In fact, the plots nearest the house seemed to give the highest yield.
            The research on “constraints” was Bob Herdt’s main focus and led to a unique IRRI contribution in both methodology and research results. For four years, Bob and I worked with S.K. De Datta [IRRI agronomist, 1964-92] and Kwanchai Gomez [IRRI head statistician, 1968-93] on “constraints to high yield.” We called ourselves “the gang of four” (photo at right shows gang reunion at Cornell in 2000) and conducted experiments in farmers' fields in six different countries to see if the yields from our level of inputs would beat their yields. Most farmers in general were doing quite well, though underinvesting in fertilizer in the dry season. However, the expenditure on insecticides in most years did not justify the cost, a finding that would be proven time and again in the future. In fact, there was a general overuse of insecticides (including on the IRRI experiment station), which led to severe crop losses throughout Asia. The real difficulty was trying to identify the factors that explained why some farmers were so far from the frontier function. Truly interdisciplinary research is sometimes very painful. But I have found interdisciplinary research (and teaching) to be very rewarding.
            In 1974, I convinced my Iowa State University classmate, Yujiro Hayami, to come to IRRI for two years. I consider Hayami to be perhaps the best agricultural economist in Asia. Not only is his mind better than mine, he can also beat me on the tennis court. What distinguishes Hayami is his ability to do very macro development research and very micro farm-level research. Even after returning to Japan and writing his seminal book with Vern Ruttan, Agricultural Development an International Perspective, he has continued his research involvement at IRRI. With Masao Kikuchi, he published A Rice Village Saga: Three decades of the Green Revolution in the Philippines. In 1999, Hayami received the Shiju Hosho or Purple Medal, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Japanese Government. The medal was presented to him by the Emperor of Japan (whose birthday is the same as mine – 23 December – though he is four years younger).
            Hayami and I delved into the policy area in the mid-1970s, advising the Philippine government (secretaries of finance and agriculture) on fertilizer pricing. It was just a matter of understanding the fertilizer-rice price ratio. Some may have forgotten that we had an energy crisis in the 1970s similar to what we have experienced recently. The Philippine government had rushed out and imported a lot of fertilizer, which it couldn’t sell at the purchased price. Then, Agriculture Secretary Arturo Tanco invited me to a meeting where they planned to make a decision. I declined, saying that this was their decision. I read the next day in the papers that they had lowered the fertilizer price. This was I believe the only time in my life I had a direct influence on policy.
            Another economist, Ed Price, joined IRRI in 1975 to do research in cropping systems. The cropping systems program cut across departments and was funded by the Canadian International Development Research Service. The research program initiated research on gender issues headed by Thelma Paris, who eventually joined SSD as an internationally recruited scientist. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a great deal of interest globally in cropping and farming systems, but funding gradually dried up. However, research in rice-based cropping systems continues. For example, the very successful Rice-Wheat Consortium has been conducting research in the Indo-Gangetic Plain since it was established in 1994. Price is currently the associate vice chancellor and director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M.

The other social sciences
Ours was called the Agricultural Economics Department, but, from early on, we included other disciplines. The Agricultural Economics Department became the Social Sciences Division (SSD) in 1990.  In 1969-70, Bob Huke, head of the Geography Department at Dartmouth, spent a year with us as a visiting scientist. This was just the beginning of his long association with IRRI, covering more than a quarter century. He was appointed visiting scientist for a dozen times; most of his stays were in December through March (a good time to avoid New England winters and enjoy the warm dry weather in the Philippines). Huke’s geographic research covered a range of topics. However, he is best known for his characterization and mapping of the rice areas of Asia by cultural type—irrigated wet season, irrigated dry season, rainfed, upland, and deepwater. This work was undertaken with the help of his wife, Ellie, a cartographer. Their 1997 publication, Rice Area by Type of Culture: South, Southeast and East Asia, compares the change in area of each type between1978-80 and the mid-1990s.
          In 1977, Grace Goodell, an anthropologist joined us as a Rockefeller post-doctoral fellow. Anthropologists, in general, were very negative about the Green Revolution, so she had to disown her profession to become associated with IRRI. She lived in two villages in Central Luzon coming back to IRRI periodically for a week or so. She wrote an excellent series of memos to the IRRI staff on what farmers thought about the new technology and how they were using it. At one meeting, she asked the farmers: if they had a problem with their rice crop, where would they go to for help? There was silence. Goodell volunteered, “The extension service?”. They laughed. Then, one farmer said that he had heard of a place south of Manila where they had white stakes in front of their fields and they might be able to help.
          In the three and a half years she was at IRRI, Goodell became involved with Peter Kenmore, a graduate student at IRRI, and Jim Litsinger, IRRI entomologist (1974-92), in the complex issue of integrated pest management (IPM) or how to get farmers to use less pesticide. At IRRI today, K.L. Heong is testing a different approach, mass media, to achieve the same end.  Since leaving IRRI, Goodell, for many years, has been professor of international development at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

          Shortly before I left IRRI to return to Cornell in 1978, Bob Herdt and I sat down for a couple of hours and outlined a book, The Rice Economy of Asia, agreeing on who would write which chapters. It would take us seven years to complete the book! Often overlooked is the appendix to the book which is in a separate volume. It contains data on rice production, area, yield, and prices for each Asian country carefully documented as to source and covering the period from the early part of the 20th century to 1982. It has a unique set of data.

New leadership
After I left, Herdt took over as head who, in turn, departed  IRRI in 1983 to become science advisor to the CGIAR Secretariat. Later, he joined the Rockefeller Foundation as director of agricultural sciences and now works “in retirement” at Cornell.
          IRRI continued to obtain the services of excellent social scientists: John Flinn (IRRI economist, 1978-91), who unfortunately later died of cancer; Christina David, who I hired as a research assistant, went on to earn her PhD under Peter Timmer at Stanford and, after leaving IRRI, is still doing quality research on the Philippine agricultural economy; Prabhu Pingali who left IRRI for FAO and is now the head of agricultural policy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; David Dawe, another of Peter Timmer’s students, who left IRRI to join FAO; Mahabub Hossain, who left IRRI to become executive director of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), which today is one of the largest Southern development organizations employing more than 120,000 people.

I should also mention that we have some outstanding “alumni,” that is to say, graduate students, who did their thesis research with us. For example, Mark Rosegrant, a PhD student from the University of Michigan spent a year at IRRI in 1976-77 on thesis research and now is the director of the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Jikun Huang, a PhD student at UPLB, did his thesis research at IRRI in the late 1980s. In 2000, he became the founder and director of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
            In short, IRRI has been a career-launching pad for numerous senior staff and scholars in the social sciences and in the biophysical sciences as well. Some have stayed at IRRI; others have gained notoriety for their accomplishments elsewhere in and outside of the rice-growing world.

“Back home” at IRRI
Recently (June 2007 to June 2008), I had the opportunity to return to IRRI as acting head of SSD. Mahabub Hossain had returned to Bangladesh and we were searching for a new SSD head. So, here I was 30 years later in the same old job—well, not quite.
            Many people asked me, “What was it like to be back in Los Baños again and working at IRRI?” First, I was pleased to find that people whom we had hired in the 1970s, three of whom are still at IRRI—Pie Moya, Mirla Domingo, and Esther Marciano—were driving better cars than I own (I have a 1994 jeep). They, along with Thelma Paris, represent much of the institutional memory of SSD, so important to a well-functioning program. Second, it was a great treat to be back working with an international and Filipino staff, who are very dedicated but know how to enjoy life.
            I would be remiss if I did not also mention Gelia Castillo (photo right) one of the very first persons I met when I arrived in Los Baños in 1965. She taught sociology for many years at the College cum University. But from the very beginning, she was involved with our activities at IRRI, lending support and watching what we were doing with a critical eye. Castillo has been, in recent years, a consultant at IRRI giving advice not just to SSD but also to the directors general. We all still waited at IRRI seminars for her penetrating observations in the question-and-answer period and final syntheses of our annual research program reviews. And she has the luxury of not owning a computer.
            However, in addressing the question of what it was like, I look at it from two perspectives: “you can’t go home again—back home to the old form and system of things, which once seemed everlasting but are changing all the time” (Thomas Wolf, 1940, You Can’t Go Home Again) and “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
            You can go home again. Let me address the second perspective first. When I read the Philippine newspapers, the Star, the Inquirer, the Bulletin, it seemed that nothing had changed. The same old families were running the country and arguing among themselves. Corruption was rampant. (Of course we have corruption in the United States, but much of it is legal.) From the outside, IRRI—both the Institute and the staff housing—looked much the same as when we had left in 1978. There were a few additions here and there and, of course, the trees had grown. At the guest house, where I stayed, the Western-style menu for meals, I think, had been set back in the 1960s. Two of the staff there remembered my children from the 1970s. I began to think: “Maybe you can go home again.”
            I was back at IRRI during an exciting time in that rice prices were rising due, in large part, to the rise in oil prices and to the underinvestment in research over the past several years (see IRRI budget chart again). When I arrived in June 1970, the price of Thai 5% brokens was $325 per ton. By March 2008, it was $1,000. As of December 2008, it was back down almost to the previous level (see graph left).
            Reflecting back to the 1970s, this was certainly déjà vu. In a seminar, Reflections and Projections: The Rice Crisis Past and Present, I gave toward the end of my stay on 24 April 2008, I showed some newspaper clippings and a Time cover (right) from the 1970s, pointing out that they could have been those of today: A rice crisis is boiling, FAO warns of a food shortage, The world is eating more than it is producing, and Rice hoarders get a new warning. IRRI’s response to the recent rice crisis has been to re-emphasize its root mission of increasing rice production in Asia with some attention now to Africa.
            One day, about the time that rice prices reached a peak, I was in the Director General’s office. Robert Zeigler started the conversation: “The trouble with you economists…” (I thought to myself, how many times have I heard that? But I never heard anyone say, “The trouble with you plant breeders or the trouble with you plant pathologists...”). Bob went on:  “The trouble with you economists is that you are always looking back, you are never looking to the future.” I said: “Bob, you should feel lucky, we are very bad at predicting the future." To verify this point, economists had failed to predict the current financial crisis.

            You can’t go home again. Now, I turn to the first perspective. Despite the familiar appearance from the outside, not surprisingly in many other ways, almost everything had changed. The most obvious changes were in the area of biotechnology and information technologies, including e-mails and cell phones. This has broadened the research and extension agenda. The Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Division, for example, includes the upstream researchers concerned with gene discovery and, on the downstream, researchers promoting participatory plant breeding. There is increasing attention to the rainfed environments where breeding for tolerance for abiotic stresses—submergence, drought, and salt—holds great promise. In the development and dissemination of hybrid rice, a consortium has been established with private seed companies. There are strong connections with advanced research centers and universities and a well-functioning set of outreach networks facilitating the extension of improved technologies. Both inside and outside IRRI, there are discussions of how far IRRI should go upstream in its research or leave it to the ARIs or the private sector and how far downstream or leave it to the national programs.
            Here is one example of an inside-outside discussion. I have been in touch recently with Peter Jennings (integrated agronomy), Norman Uphoff (system of rice intensification), and the IRRI staff (best management practices). There is a consensus among all three parties that there is a yield gap and there needs to be more focus on improved management. Rice responds to good management. There is an old Chinese saying that rice is like a woman, if you treat her well, you will benefit greatly, but if you treat her badly, watch out. The question is how best to close the gap.
            There are many distractions affecting research productivity, e-mails being one; the search for money in what in recent years has been a declining budget (particularly the loss of unrestricted funds) being another. There are also a whole series of requests from the increasingly bureaucratic CGIAR about which I will say more later. The travel and the meetings seem endless. One program leader had asked each of his researchers to tell him how much time they were actually spending on research.
            This reminded me of the early halcyon days of IRRI when none of the above constraints were a problem. There were just 20 of us internationally hired staff and one coffee shop. We saw many of the staff members each morning at coffee. On Saturday mornings at 8 a.m., there was a seminar. Each of the departments was responsible for reporting on their research in four to six of these seminars each year. The whole staff was “required” to attend. It was like going to church. You didn’t ask what the sermon was. One couldn’t understand many of the technical details in, say, soilmicrobiology—but, through the questions and answers, one could understand the basic issues. It was a great learning experience. And the money came as manna from heaven. By the time I left IRRI in 1978, the Institute had more than doubled in size, there were two coffee shops, and I only knew what half of the scientists were doing.
            As with the biological sciences, the research agenda of SSD has also broadened. There are now six internationally recruited staff (IRS) in SSD—three economists, a gender specialist, a geographic information systems (GIS) specialist, and an impact assessment specialist. SSD is now headed by a macro/policy economist, Sam Mohanty, a former professor of Texas A&M University (photo right), whom we recruited when I was still the acting head. Aside from their own disciplinary research, SSD researchers were involved in a number of programs headed by the biological scientists and their contributions were much appreciated.
             Sushil Pandey, in addition to working with the rainfed program, was involved with policy issues. His handling of much of the administrative issues made life easier for me and kept me out of trouble. Kei Kajisa was working with the irrigation program, conducting the latest round of the “loop survey” and undertaking research with the newly established program in Mozambique. Thelma Paris has gained an international reputation for her work in gender equality and empowerment. She also was spearheading the program in “participatory plant breeding.” Robert Hijmans in the GIS unit was involved in a range of research activities, including mapping to better define the rice-growing environments and areas of poverty. He has since left for U.C. Davis and has been replaced by Andrew Nelson in October 2009. Deborah Templeton, the first impact assessment specialist, had created an awareness of the importance of the analysis and reporting of research impacts among the IRRI scientists. Templeton left IRRI in March 2008 and a replacement, David Raitzer, reported in June 2009.
            In September 2007 a conference was held at IRRI on Rural Poverty and Income Dynamics in Asia and Africa. It was organized and funded by the Japanese Foundation for Advanced Studies in International Development, whose director is Keijiro Otsuka, former chair of IRRI’s Board of Trustees. The proceedings have been published as a book (Routledge, 2008). Three of the nine chapters are based on longitudinal survey data collected by IRRI in the 1980s and early 2000s. These surveys were conducted largely through the initiative of Mahabub Hossain, who has conducted other research on poverty, including the access of the poor to credit. A fourth chapter is based on research conducted by Kei Kajisa in Tamil Nadu covering the period 1971-2003.
            On 18-19 February 2008, SSD sponsored a Rice Policy Forum with participants from most of the rice-growing countries in Asia and from the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) and Mozambique in Africa. The conference was organized by Sushil Pandey and held at a time when countries were searching ways to deal with the “rice crisis.” A major objective was to identify specific areas for further collaboration and research. These proceedings are also being published. The continuation of these network activities, such as those described above, often coupled with the collection of survey data and degree and nondegree training, has been one of the great strengths of IRRI as a whole.
            It is virtually impossible to go anywhere in the rice-growing world and not find someone who has been to Los Baños. A number of IRRI “graduates” are in very prominent positions in their respective countries. One of the tasks of SSD, with the help of Gelia Castillo and Noel Magor, head of IRRI’s Training Center, in training is to update the data base of IRRI alumni, particularly those who were in the graduate degree programs. The plan is to identify and award outstanding alumni in the celebration of the 50th anniversary.
            The work on “impact assessment” introduced me to a whole new language and to the CGIAR Science Council’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment. The Panel met at IRRI and I was able to sit in on some of the sessions where they reported on the results of the research being conducted in various centers. I was, in general, not very impressed. There was not the quality of the work of Bob Evenson at Yale or Dana Dalrymple at USAID who tracked the spread of the high-yielding varieties. But, in fairness, it was much easier to track the HYVs. There was much more reliable information. As we all know, the results of research often take years, sometime decades to have an impact and identifying attribution is often extremely difficult. The real impact of the HYVs on rice production was not felt until the 1980s. Even then, there were subsidies for irrigation, fertilizer, and other inputs to speed the process along. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has replaced Ford and Rockefeller as one of the major funders of research in agriculture, will have to learn that “Rome was not built in a day.” The changes brought about by biological research take time. This having been said, however, research projects should be designed with impact goals clearly stated. A foundation should be laid in which to measure progress.  For example, IRRI has recently undertaken research to increase rice production in eastern Africa. A “loop survey” has been conducted in Mozambique to provide a benchmark from which to measure change.
            This raises the question of setting priorities—ex ante rather than ex-post analysis. The question becomes extremely important if you have the opportunity to add staff. It is the best way to focus or refocus the direction of the Institute. I recall a meeting in the 1970s when we sat around the table outside of Nyle Brady’s office. The question was, given the current rise in energy prices and the need to focus on fertilizer use efficiency, if we could add one more senior staff, in what area should it be? Vern Ruttan was at the meeting and to play the devil’s advocate, he turned the question around. If you were downsizing, who could you do without? This is the question that Cornell and many other universities in the United States are trying to answer today.
            Although today, the new hirings seem to be in large part donor-driven, the priority-setting exercise can still be very important. Strategic plans don’t serve the purpose as these are written for donors. I recall telling the director general at IWMI that I couldn’t think of anything we could do that wouldn’t fit under the IWMI strategic plan. I also remember that under Bob Herdt’s leadership in the 1980s, the Rockefeller Foundation conducted a very detailed priority-setting exercise (read Gary Toenniessen’s description of this process in his pioneer interview). This involved listing the resistance and tolerance traits of rice for flooding, drought, insects, diseases, etc. and determining the tools of biotechnology best suited to addressing the various problem areas. How long would it take to achieve various objectives, what would be the impact on increasing rice yields, etc.? The results were used to determine where the Foundation would put its money. But donors, in general, don’t have the capacity to do this and in fact don’t know that much about agricultural research.
            As I stated earlier, the CGIAR has become increasingly more bureaucratic. The centers are pressed to respond to requests from the Science Council, the World Bank, and the CGIAR Secretariat for information in a number of areas, which I will not detail. Some make sense, others do not. Certainly, there must be accountability.
            There has been talk for many years about restructuring the CGIAR. Now this “change management process” is happening and, at this writing, it is too early to say how this will affect the system.
            Finally, I should point out that, although much progress has been made in rice research toward achieving food security and relieving poverty over the past half century, it is hard to know what the future holds. We have entered an era of not just land but water scarcity and the threat posed by global warming.  It seems fair to say that the challenge IRRI and the rice-growing world faces today is as great or greater than that faced a half century ago on the eve of the Green Revolution.