International Rice Research Institute

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International Rice Research Institute

"Based in the Philippines, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the oldest and largest international agricultural research institute in Asia. It is an autonomous, nonprofit rice research and training organization with staff based in 14 countries in Asia and Africa...
"IRRI was established in 1960 by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations in cooperation with the Philippine government. Our headquarters—which feature modern laboratories, training and accommodation facilities, and a 252-hectare experimental farm—lie next to the main campus of the University of the Philippines Los Baños, about 60 kilometers south of the Philippine capital, Manila." [1]

The Founding of IRRI

On the U.S. State Department and CIA's urging, the Ford Foundation's new director Henry Heald set out on a project to raise crop yields in Asia. He hired Cornell agronomist Forrest F. "Frosty" Hill to reorganize the foundation's international development program. Since the 1950's, Hill had advocated establishing a program similar to the Rockefeller Foundation's Mexican Agricultural Program to work on rice in Asia.[2] The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations together pledged $7 million for IRRI, and Hill began negotiations in 1959 with the Filipino government to establish IRRI. Robert Chandler, the former president of the University of New Hampshire would serve as IRRI's first director. "Hill and Robert Chandler... viewed scientific research as a kind of moral institution, a solvent for national and elite prejudice. Chandler incorporated this ethic in everything IRRI did."[3]

The Significance of Los Baños

IRRI was established adjacent to the University of the Philippines Los Baños campus. However, Los Baños has another significance in the Philippines too: it has long been a destination for pilgrimages to its healing baths and to visit Mount Makiling, "a sacred spot since pre-Christian times." Thus, the location of Los Baños "cast a spiritual aura over IRRI that the discovery of miracle rice only confirmed."[4]

The Architecture of IRRI

The design and construction of IRRI's buildings were overseen by the modernist architect Ralph T. Walker.

"Walker's design made no concessions to either climate or local conventions. There was "no true Philippine style,"... nationalistic styles had given way to the modern idiom. Constructed completely of imported materials, the sprawling one-story aluminum-and-glass structures featured modular walls to encourage an egalitarian office culture. Air conditioning, tiles, plumbing, and upholstery conveyed "the power and richness of American life," and also a sense of permanence. Walker felt his buildings emblemized "a new type of imperialism" based on "specialized knowledge generously given to backward peoples."[5]

Additionally, the homes in IRRI's housing compound were ranch style homes with 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, air conditioning, washing machines and dryers, tennis, a pool, and a lake view, each costing $60,000 in 1961. Each came equipped with its own generator. The homes were for the Asians training at IRRI: "From their air-conditioned offices and living rooms, trainees from Karachi or Saigon would view the problem of underdevelopment from the vantage of modernity."[6]

IRRI As a Tourist Destination

Perhaps not surprisingly, IRRI attracted tourists. Following its founding in 1962, "busses from Manila brought a thousand tourists a week."[7]

"IRRI opened a welcome center and conducted guided tours... An eleven-minute film introduced Filipinos to themselves, as they were seen by outsiders. Beginning with a shot of peasants weeding and planting, tasks some in the audience had performed that day, it observed that these "primitive methods" of cultivation were "inefficient, wasteful of human energy," and posed the essential question: "Can modern science help these people grow more rice?""[8]

The PR Campaign of "Miracle Rice"

Making a Splash

"IRRI's scientists set out to "change the architecture of the rice plant" - to make it shorter, greener, with fewer leaves and more panicles - their mission dictated as much by a need for institutional distinction as much as by the requirements of Asian agriculture."[9] As a number of institutions simultaneously worked to improve rice via breeding, IRRI felt they needed to distinguish themselves, to make a "splash," with the rice varieties they produced. Robert Chandler "elected to avoid incremental improvements in rice varieties and go for "the big jump."[10] This is similar to the efforts of Norman Borlaug and others working with him on wheat breeding, particularly in India, during the same time period.

The Target

Under Chandler's direction, IRRI's team decided upon eight characteristics that would make up their "target" ideal rice plant: "The rice would be short to avoid wasting materials on the stalk; dark green, to absorb sunlight better; and rigid, to allow for machine harvesting. It should grow anywhere in tropical Asia, and have resistance to pests and disease."[11] This approach was controversial:

"Dioscoro Umali, dean of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture, attended IRRI's Thursday seminars in 1963 and 1964. The target variety, he pointed out, would require expensive inputs: not just fertilizer but also herbicides to prevent shading by taller weeds. Shallow-rooted dwarf plants needed more precise hydraulic control than most peasant farmers could manage. Farmers would have to discard nearly all of their practices and adopt new techniques for planting, weeding, irrigation, harvesting, and threshing. New chemicals and equipment would require credit and distribution networks that the region did not have. If adopted, the target variety would radically disrupt the social environment in which rice was grown. His criticisms hit upon an unstated objective of the Big Jump strategy: to induce social change by displacing the culture and economy of rice cultivation."[12]

IR-8 "Miracle" Rice

The initial result of IRRI's rice breeding work was the commercial release of IR-8, a rice variety dubbed "Miracle Rice." For more information, see the article on IR-8 Rice

Actual vs. Stated Goals of High Yielding Rice

Modernizing Peasants With Improved Seeds

To the architects of Asia's "modernization" and "development," the IR-8 rice seeds were key. "IRRI's project proceeded from an assumption that peasants were not yet rational. Their awakening to modernity would begin with the decision to plant IRRI's seeds."[13] This idea is an important one. It implies that by throwing out the economics of peasant farming (which relies on low input systems driving toward autonomy and independence from the market) and instead adopting an entrepreneurial farming system, the peasants would become rational. Farming in a low-risk way to achieve subsistence without trying higher-risk methods that might lead to getting rich but might also lead to financial and environmental ruin of the peasants' major assets (land, genetics, livestock) was seen as irrational.

Implications of IR-8's Need for Inputs

Despite promises of automatic high yields, IR-8 could not produce its promised yields without costly inputs. When USAID distributed IR-8 seeds, it distributed an entire package containing both seeds and agrochemicals. [14] Meanwhile, the agrochemical company Caltex built a national distribution network in the Philippines.

"The foundations took criticism, then and since, for enabling U.S. multinationals to penetrate Third World agriculture, but this analysis actually understates the ambition of IR-8's modernizing project. [Marcos'] technocrats knew reliance on manufactured "inputs" afforded opportunities to impose a solution to the rice crisis by extending [Philippine] government supervision over millions of subsistence farmers living largely outside the cash economy."[15]

Rafael Salas, head of the coordinating council set up by Marcos to control and direct prices and supply of the inputs needed for IR-8, said "Even if it wasn't such a spectacular producer, one would advocate pushing miracle rice culture if only to train the Filipino farmer into thinking in terms of techniques, machines, fertilizers, schedules, and experiments."[16]

Staff

Accessed August 3, 2011:[17]

Management:

Scientists:

Past Staff

Directors:

Associate Directors:

Other positions:

Trustees

Accessed August 3, 2011:[18]

Contact

Web: http://www.irri.org

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch articles

References

  1. ↑ About, International Rice Research Institute, accessed December 9, 2007.
  2. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 162.
  3. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 162.
  4. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 166.
  5. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 163.
  6. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 163.
  7. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 165.
  8. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 166.
  9. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 167.
  10. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 167.
  11. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 167.
  12. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 167-168.
  13. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 169.
  14. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 170.
  15. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 170.
  16. ↑ Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, p. 170.
  17. ↑ IRRI Staff, Accessed August 3, 2011.
  18. ↑ IRRI Board of Trustees, Accessed August 3, 2011.

External links

External Articles

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