You reached this page through the archive. Click here to return to the archive.

Note: This article is over a year old and information contained in it may no longer be accurate. Please use the contact information in the lower-left corner to verify any information in this article.

Agricultural economist to speak April 28

By Peter Hill '08
April 22, 2008

How do we ensure that the world's rapidly rising population has enough to eat in the years to come? Increase agricultural productivity, says University of Minnesota Professor of Science and Technology Policy Philip Pardey. He will discuss agricultural research in the developing world during a lecture at St. Olaf College April 28.

PardeyPhilip
Pardey
The lecture, titled "Links in a Global Chain," will begin at 3:30 p.m. Monday in Holland Hall 413. It is free and open to the public.

Pardey is an expert in global agricultural research and development. He's also an authority on the economic impact of this research, as well as the policy aspects of genetics and bioscience. In his most recent book, Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late?, Pardey considers the slowdown in agricultural research among developed countries and evaluates its impact on the developing world's blossoming populations.

"By 2050 we'll have at least another 2 billion people on top of the 6.2 billion we're currently attempting to feed, and we're going to have to do that with very little new land in production. We have no alternative but to increase productivity dramatically," Pardey says.

A native of Australia, Pardey earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Adelaide and a doctorate in agricultural economics from the University of Minnesota. He served as a senior research officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research in The Hague, Netherlands, and later directed the Science and Technology Policy Program at the National Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. In 2002 he joined the University of Minnesota's Department of Applied Economics. He is author or co-author of 215 books, articles and papers, including Ending Hunger in our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.