Norman Uphoff

Norman Uphoff (born 1941) is an American social scientist serving as a Professor of Government and International Agriculture at Cornell University. He is the Acting Director of the Cornell Institute of Public Administration and the former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development.

Early life and career

Uphoff was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm. In 1966, he took his master’s degree from Princeton University in public affairs. He then took his doctorate in political science, public administration, and development economics from the University of California at Berkeley (1970). The next year he began teaching at Cornell. There he pursued the study and application of rural development principles, irrigation management and credit programs for small farmers in the developing world. He received his M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (1996). He has served on USAID's Research Advisory Committee and the South Asia Committee of the U.S. Social Science Research Council, and has been a consultant for the World Bank, USAID, the United Nations, the Ford Foundation, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and other agencies. Professor Uphoff teaches the CIPA core foundation course, GOVT 6927: Planning and Management of Agricultural and Rural Development.

Expertise

Uphoff is a subject-matter expert in development administration, irrigation management, local participation, and strategies for broad-based rural development. His current interests have expanded beyond the social sciences to include agro-ecology and rice intensification. Uphoff is also a proponent of fair trade with developing countries. He espouses the view that fair trade be promoted widely. Under his approach, subsidies to American farmers impart an unfair competitive advantage against small-scale farmers in the developing world. Uphoff believes that the United States should promote free trade by practicing fair trade through unsubsidized production.^[1]

SRI

Uphoff leads the Cornell University initiative to alleviate the global food crisis with new methods of growing rice.^[2] Rice harvests typically double when rice seedlings are planted early, given more seedlings more room to grow. This allows for less field flooding. That cuts water and seed costs while promoting root and leaf growth. The method promoted by Professor Uphoff is the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). SRI emphasizes the individual plant quality over quantity. Uphoff sees it as “a less-is-more” ethic to rice cultivation.^[3] SRI has experienced significant professional headwind, including criticism by Uphoff’s peers at Cornell University. The Rice Research Institute has been a critic. It is an organization which, in part, started the Green Revolution raising grain production through rice genetics. SRI is being used in India, China, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam among 28 countries on three continents.

The SRI initiative was funded anonymously by Charles F. Feeney's Atlantic Foundation in 1990. Feeney was a partner with Robert Warren Miller in Duty Free Sales. He gave the Cornell $15 million to start the world hunger program. Dr. Uphoff led the resulting Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development from 1990 to 2005. In this role he travelled to Madagascar in 1993, where slash and burn race farming degraded and destroyed rain forests. While reviewing the problem, he heard stories of a French Jesuit priest, Father Henri de Laulanié. The priest refined a high-yield rice cultivation method called the System of Rice Intensification.

Uphoff’s approach has been to work from the ground up, seeking the input and participation of farmers in developing countries and then taking the results of that work to the scientific community. As he states, “In part because most agricultural scientists have been so skeptical, even dismissive of SRI, our work has usually begun with NGO's and the farmers they assist. There have been a few agricultural researchers who have had open minds and have taken an interest in SRI from the outset, but mostly we have developed our understanding of SRI and have made adaptations in close association with farmers. Now the scientific community is becoming more interested.”^[4] Professor Uphoff sees the advantage to American consumers lying in increase market diversity. Developed production in other countries provides a biodiversity richness through many varieties with qualities of taste, texture, color, aroma, etc. and higher nutritional quality not currently available. He sees fair trade and SRI as means of lowering rice prices, increasing farmer profits, all while making rice more popular and widely-consumed. Uphoff extols the virtues of rice in soups, salads, desserts, casseroles, poultry stuffing, and other uses.^[5]

Sample publications

• Norman Uphoff, Thakur & Anthony, "An assessment of physiological effects of system of rice intensification (SRI) practices compared to recommended rice cultivation practices in India," 46 Experimental Agriculture 77-98 (2010);
• Norman Uphoff et. Alia,"Learning about positive plant-microbial interactions from the System of Rice Intensification (SRI)," with Anas, Rupela, Thakur and Thiyagarajan, 98 Aspects of Applied Biology 29-54 (2009);
• Biological Approaches to Sustainable Soil System (2006)(editor);
• Norman Uphoff,Agroecological Innovations: Increasing Food Production with Participatory Development (Earthscan Press, 2002);
• Norman Uphoff, Milton Esman & Khrishna, "System of Rice Intensification responds to 21st Century Needs, 3 Rice Today 42-43;
• Reasons for Success: Learning from Instructive Experiences in Rural Development (1997);
• Norman Uphoff, Puzzles of Productivity in Public Organizations (1992);
• Norman Uphoff, Local Institutional Development (1986);
• Norman Uphoff & Warren Ilchman, The Political Economy of Development (1972);
• Norman Uphoff & Warren Ilchman, The Political Economy of Change (1969).

References

1. ^ Border Jumpers, A Conversation with Norman Uphoff, Advisor to Nourishing the Planet (May 14, 2010).
2. ^ William J. Broad, Food Revolution That Starts With Rice, N.Y. Times (June 17, 2008).
3. ^ Id.
4. ^ Border Jumpers, A Conversation with Norman Uphoff, Advisor to Nourishing the Planet (May 14, 2010).
5. ^ Id.

External links

• Official Curricula Vitae.

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Name	Uphoff, Norman
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Date of birth	1941
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