The Birth of International Agricultural Research Institutes in the Mid-20th Century

By the late 1950s the technologies and hybrid plants developed in the Rockefeller Foundation’s (RF) Mexican Agriculture Program (MAP) had spread globally. Within a decade, the astonishing increases in crop yields made possible by RF-sponsored research had been dubbed the “Green Revolution.” Sturdier, more productive rice plants brought food security to developing nations and staved off projected famines, especially in Southeast Asia. The RF sought to ensure that its agriculture programs would continue on their own footing. In seeking to set such programs free, the RF followed a tradition dating back to its founding in 1913. As Robert D. Calkins, former head of the General Education Board (GEB) put it: “[T]he aim of those who help should be to make their help unnecessary.”Robert D. Calkins, An Experience in Southern Development, Point IV Seminar, Washington, D.C., May 17, 1951, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), RG 3.1, Series 908, Box 14, Folder 144.

Building a Network

Agricultural research on a global scale was becoming increasingly expensive. Continuing programs in such a difficult environment depended upon leveraging partnerships and creating permanent, independent institutions. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) became the first and flagship example of a far-reaching, RF-inspired network of research centers.

According to an oral tradition at the RF, J. George Harrar, RF Deputy Director for Agriculture, and “Frosty” Hill, Vice President of the Ford Foundation, rode the same commuter train into New York City every day. Informal conversations during their shared commute soon led to formal collaboration between the two foundations. Ford’s endowment was four times larger than Rockefeller’s, but the RF had deeper experience in the field, so Ford agreed to cover capital expenses, entrusting staffing and program development responsibilities to the RF.

With additional support from the Philippine government, IRRI opened in 1962 in Los Baños, Philippines. Its main objective was to re-engineer the rice plant as effectively as Norman Borlaug had re-engineered wheat in Mexico. Shortly it did. Hybrid cross “IR-8” was released in 1966, touted as “the miracle rice” for its high yields and sturdy resistance to weather and disease. It was quickly mobilized to curb projected famines in India during the late 1960s, and in the Philippines it was even sold in the lobbies of banks and department stores. It did, however, require copious amounts of chemical fertilizers, new irrigation techniques, and other industrial supports to survive. So, while effective at increasing yields, IR-8 was also criticized for drawing corporate agribusiness into the Philippine economy, as well as its harmful environmental side-effects.

The early successes of IRRI enabled the establishment of other research institutes in short order, including Mexico’s International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in 1963; the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia, in 1967; and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria, also in 1967. While all four institutes were independent entities, they were staffed from the close-knit network of agricultural professionals fostered by the RF. The RF’s rice program in Asia was headed by Richard Bradfield, one of the three original authors of the report on agriculture in Mexico that led to MAP. Sterling Wortman, IRRI’s first assistant director, had been the RF’s corn breeder in Mexico. CIAT’s first director general was Ulysses J. Grant, a plant breeder in the RF Colombia program and former RF Director of Agriculture. IITA was closely connected to the University of Ibadan, a major focus of the RF’s University Development Program.

These first four institutes established the framework for a permanent agricultural technology complex. The RF had started small in Mexico, building networks and developing expertise, training local farmers, and always working in concert with the Mexican government. The new agricultural institutes now adopted this model. Their mission was to promote the practical application of agricultural knowledge from experimentation to implementation. They conducted basic research in agricultural sciences, educated university students in agricultural subjects, and extended advisory services to rural farmers. The institutes also made long-term investments in their home regions while aiming to create knowledge that would be globally transferrable.

Filling a Crucial Gap: The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

By the mid-1960s, the spread of Green Revolution agriculture had built a great deal of momentum and had become –almost — global in reach. While these initiatives had achieved notable success in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and established scientific networks that allowed other developing nations such as Turkey and Pakistan to make similar advances, they had yet to benefit a key region of the world.

These programs had largely bypassed Africa, a continent with wide-ranging climates, broad swaths of uncultivated land, poor soil, and a growing population of subsistence farmers practicing shifting cultivation, a system whereby land was cleared, cultivated, and then abandoned until its fertility returned. To meet the specific needs of the African tropics, RF established the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in 1967. Located at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, IITA launched an experimental, interdisciplinary program that sought to expand the strategic and geographic scope of the Green Revolution, foreshadowing RF’s focus on African agriculture at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Origins of IITA

The idea to create IITA dated back to 1963, when RF President George Harrar and Ford Foundation Vice President Frosty Hill surveyed Nigeria as a potential site for a new tropical agriculture institute. Shortly thereafter, Richard Bradfield, a member of the RF’s 1941 Agricultural Survey Commission to Mexico, and Frank Moore, a Ford Foundation program officer, made a more extensive visit, touring the country’s agricultural colleges and research centers. This was not the first time RF and Ford had collaborated on food programming – the two foundations had recently joined to create two other research institutes, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), established in the Philippines in 1959, and the Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), formed in Colombia in 1967.

When he returned, Bradfield discussed his observations with Harrar, Hill, and officers from the RF Agricultural Sciences Division. Bradfield was encouraged. Nigeria possessed a range of climates and soils representative of the tropics at large and the country already had a solid research infrastructure. In addition, the Foundation had been working with the University of Ibadan since 1953, when it provided a $10,000 grant for the college’s faculty to purchase much-needed medical equipment. Successive grants supported agricultural research programs and the university press, and helped the college establish a research and teaching program in rural pediatrics, as well as an African Studies academic center. By 1962, RF had given the college over $1 million and, one year later, Ibadan received additional grants to establish a new psychiatry and neurology department.

Hill sent Harrar an initial proposal to create a IITA two weeks after their meeting with Bradfield. Unlike RF’s other international research institutes, IITA aimed to increase production of non-cereal crops, including cassava, beans, and yams, and work along interdisciplinary lines – “agronomic, engineering, and economic” – to redevelop entire farming systems.“Proposal for an International Institute of Tropical Agriculture Located in Africa,” Rockefeller Foundation Records, RG 1.3, Series 115, Box 35, Folder 207, Rockefeller Archive Center (Sleepy Hollow, NY) (hereafter RAC).

Political Obstacles

In the mid-1960s, however, political conflict in Nigeria nearly upended RF and Ford efforts to open the Institute. After Nigeria’s independence in 1960, rival geographic and ethnic political factions frequently jostled for power. In December 1964, things came to a head when an alliance of eastern and western parties, citing corruption by their northern counterparts, boycotted the scheduled parliamentary election and threatened to secede from the country. After a series of coups, members of the Igbo ethnic group declared eastern Nigeria independent as the Republic of Biafra in May 1967. A bloody civil war resulted, lasting over two years and heightening geographic and ethnic tensions in the country.

RF and Ford followed these events closely. While the foundations preferred Nigeria as the site for IITA, they worried the country’s political strife would splinter the University of Ibadan, which possessed an Igbo Vice Chancellor even though it was located in a non-Igbo part of the country. During a visit to the university, David Heaps, Ford’s representative in Nigeria, noted the country “was undergoing its most serious political crisis since independence” and that the unrest had caused Ibadan leadership to behave in a “condition of frantic excitement, verging almost on panic.” Worse, Heaps noted, there were already rumors that the competing governments had started to play political football with the college’s financing. As a result, he recommended the Institute not “have an integral, functional, or institutional tie-up with the University of Ibadan.”David Heaps to F.F. Hill and George Harrar,” “International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the Nigerian Political Situation,” November 13, 1965, Rockefeller Foundation Records, RG 1.3, Series 115, Box 36, Folder 211, RAC.

Despite continued unrest, however, RF and Ford leaders concluded that IITA had bipartisan appeal and decided to open the Institute in Nigeria. “The situation is at present hopeful,” foundation officials noted after a coup in February 1966. “Foreigners were not disturbed…and there is no indication of anti-foreigner or anti-white feelings.” Even better, the new government remained committed to IITA, having recently secured the land upon which the Institute would operate.“Meeting on February 3, 1966, regarding continuation of development of IITA in view of recent happenings in Nigeria,” February 11, 1966, Rockefeller Foundation Records, RG 1.3, Series 115, Box 36, Folder 212, RAC. RF and Ford remained optimistic even after a countercoup occurred six months later. “Despite two upheavals,” IITA’s president and a future RF Vice President William M. Myers noted, “the government of Nigeria has moved forward steadily with Nigeria’s responsibilities to the IITA project.”William Myers to George Harrar, September 9, 1966, RG 1.3, Series 115, Box 36, Folder 212, RAC. Nigerian officials ultimately issued an official decree announcing the creation of IITA in July 1967. Ford support was particularly crucial to launching the Institute – it provided over $14 million for constructing IITA and shared the Institute’s operational costs with RF.

New Challenges

From the start, RF and Ford believed IITA would help meet the needs of an increasingly hungry and overpopulated developing world. Despite alarmingly high hunger rates, too much tropical land was left uncultivated or underutilized, yields were low, and the region’s population was growing, stretching its food resources even further. Things needed to improve before the situation became even more dire. IITA promised to meet this challenge using programs similar to those established at IRRI and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) – it would conduct research on yield, train scientists, and develop a library of scholarship on tropical farming.

Africa’s Particular Needs

However, IITA was different from the other international research institutes in several respects. The African tropics grew a wider variety of crops than maize, wheat, and rice, including cowpeas and soybeans, as well as root crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, and yams. IITA would thus have to prioritize which crops to grow first. The IITA board decided it would initially work with IRRI and CIMMYT to increase rice and maize yield before developing new breeds of grain legumes and root crops, a process that required more knowledge building and experimentation.

Even more notably, IITA’s central goal was to redevelop tropical farming systems. Most African farmers practiced shifting cultivation, a system whereby land was cleared, cultivated, and then abandoned until its fertility returned. RF and Ford estimated that this system produced crops every 3-5 years out of a possible 15-25, a rate insufficient to meet tropical population growth. While the Institute focused on maize and rice yield in the short-term, IITA planned to take on a broader range of crops in a systems-based approach that created interdisciplinary teams comprised of plant breeders, soil experts, engineers, and economists who worked within each of IITA’s four core program areas: Farming Systems, Cereal Improvement, Grain Legume Improvement, and Root, Tuber, and Vegetable Improvement. This new strategy was a dramatic shift, one that deemphasized work on increasing the yield of a single staple crop and instead embraced an ecological approach to farming. Though this strategy might not produce immediate results, IITA leaders reasoned, it was the key to improving tropical food security in the long-term.

Taking Stock

A review published ten years after IITA’s founding concluded that “the research problems addressed by the Institute are probably the broadest, most complex and challenging among those encountered” by the international research institutes. There had been clear successes – IITA had developed new high-yield varieties of cassava, made new advances on other tropical crops, and created an emerging body of knowledge relating to African farming. The Institute had also developed modern facilities and built a body of knowledge for tropical researchers. For these reasons, the review stated that IITA had become “recognized as a center of excellence in tropical agricultural research in Africa.”William K. Gamble, “Evolution of the Program of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, 1967-1980,” Sterling Wortman Papers, Series 1, Box 2, Folder 12, RAC

Nevertheless, the review conceded that the Institute’s systems-based research had yielded slow results. IITA’s work had demonstrated the challenges of bringing the Green Revolution to the tropics and, more specifically, to Africa. Reforming farming systems for local subsistence farmers was no easy task. It required an interdisciplinary program that accounted for indigenous cultures, a host of local political, economic, and environmental factors, and adequately-trained extension personnel. These issues would be at the forefront of RF thinking as it targeted a “second Green Revolution, aimed squarely at Africa” in the coming decades. In that sense, IITA helped lay the groundwork for RF’s new agricultural strategy at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Making the Institutes Independent: The Launch of the CGIAR

Even the combined resources of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations would prove insufficient to support international agricultural research in perpetuity. The RF, along with Ford, the United Nations, and the World Bank, along with other agencies and funders, began to explore a shift in the funding and organizational structure for the institutes almost as soon as construction in IITA had been completed (as well as CIAT, like IITA, founded in 1967). From 1968 to 1971, at its Bellagio conference center in Italy, the RF convened a series of meetings to consider future options. Specialists from national and international agencies presented policy papers on issues ranging from capital flows to new technologies to metrics for measuring world needs and the growing gap between developed and developing nations. Eventually, the World Bank Executive Board was persuaded to provide a recurring annual grant to the newly formed Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which was founded after a series of Bellagio convenings. The original members were the four research institutes the RF had helped create. CGIAR grew to include sixteen member groups by the 1980s.

The Green Revolution sparked by the Rockefeller Foundation’s program in Mexico has not been monolithic. Rather, it is an ongoing series of experiments, feedback, and new insights. The longevity of CGIAR, and the wide reach of its member groups, has enabled new research in response to the lessons of the 1950s and 1960s. Research on cereal grains has extended to cassava and legumes, which are key crops in the diet of many African countries. Molecular biology has contributed to genomic mapping, which enables scientists to breed crops with higher yields and more resistance to disease. And, perhaps most importantly, the international research community has begun to address the issues raised in resource management and ecological sustainability that had not been fully understood more than half a century ago.

Research This Topic in the Archives

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• “Program and Policy – Commission on Review,” 1950 November-1951 December. Rockefeller Foundation records, Administration, Program and Policy, Record Group 3.2, International Health Division, Series 908, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Program and Policy – Reports – P&P Agr-2 – P&P Agr-5,” 1951-1954. Rockefeller Foundation records, Administration, Program and Policy, Record Group 3.1, Natural Sciences and Agriculture, Series 915, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT),” 1955, 1958-1959, 1969-1972. Rockefeller Foundation records, Field Offices, Record Group 6, New Delhi, India, Sub Group 7, Indian Agricultural Program – Agricultural Research Institutes, Series I6, International Research Institutes, Subseries I6.03, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “International Institute of Tropical Agriculture,” 1965-1966, 1968-1969, 1971, 1973. Rockefeller Foundation records, Field Offices, Record Group 6, New Delhi, India, Sub Group 7, Indian Agricultural Program – Agricultural Research Institutes, Series I6, International Research Institutes, Subseries I6.03, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Program and Policy – Food,” 1972-1976. Rockefeller Foundation Records, Administration, Program and Policy, Record Group 3.2, General Program and Policy, Series 900, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Centro Internacional de Majoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT) – Maize and Germplasm Collection,” 1973. Rockefeller Foundation records, Field Offices, Record Group 6, New Delhi, India, Sub Group 7, Indian Agricultural Program – Agricultural Research Institutes, Series I6, International Research Institutes, Subseries I6.03, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “(Rice) – Administration – Bibliography – (International Rice Research Institute – IRRI),” 1960-1968. Rockefeller Foundation records, Projects (Grants), Record Group 1.2, Philippines, Series 242, Natural Sciences and Agriculture, Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Warren Weaver,” 1961. Rockefeller Foundation records, Oral Histories, Record Group 13, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Japan / Phillipines (President Lyndon B. Johnson Visit),” 1953. J. George Harrar papers, photographs, Series 1019, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Visit of J. G. Harrar and John D. Rockefeller 3rd,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, CIMMYT, Series 105, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “General – Unidentified,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Series 115, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “University of Wisconsin – Potato Research,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, United States, Series 200, Natural Sciences and Agriculture, Subseries 200.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “International Rice Research Institute – IRRI – Rice Fields,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, Philippines, Series 242, Natural Sciences and Agriculture, Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “International Rice Research Institute – IRRI – Rice Yield Trials,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, Philippines, Series 242, Natural Sciences and Agriculture, Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “International Rice Research Institute – IRRI – Visitors – Groups,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, Philippines, Series 242, Natural Sciences and Agriculture, Subseries 242.D, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• “Agriculture – R. Annual – Colombian Agricultural Program Annual Report,” circa 1905-1980. Rockefeller Foundation records, Photographs, Colombia, Series 311, Rockefeller Archive Center.

The Rockefeller Archive Center originally published this content in 2013 as part of an online exhibit called 100 Years: The Rockefeller Foundation (later retitled The Rockefeller Foundation. A Digital History). It was migrated to its current home on RE:source in 2022.