Cold War, world poverty, and land-grant colleges

Abstract

<p>The land-grant institutions of the United States are almost unique among the facilities for higher education ana research relating to agriculture in the western world and in other countries. They have brought the natural sciences to bear on the technical problems of agriculture at least as effectively as have the various agricultural colleges and agricultural departments of universities in other western countries. But their special contribution, on average not matched elsewhere, has been to make the social sciences meaningful in the production, marketing and distribution of food and fibers. This marriage of the natural and social sciences, with a high standard of economics at the core, has played an extremely important role in the exceptional agricultural progress of the United States, to a large measure as a result of close association of academic workers with an agricultural extension service which both in range and depth of its activities cannot be matched by other countries and which is part of the land-grant system. The record of their own achievement is, by itself, one of the most important pieces of instruction that land-grant institutions can bring to the rest of the world, especially to the underdeveloped countries where agriculture is too frequently despised by those who have received a high school or university education.</p>