The mission of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) is to study and promote sustainable rural development in the developing world. We accomplish this through research, training of U.S. and international students and outreach. Current projects are located in Asia (South Asia, Afghanistan, Philippines), Africa (Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, South Africa) and Latin America (Honduras and the Andean region).

Three quarters of the extremely poor, who earn less than a dollar a day (almost a billion people), live in rural areas. Regionally, over half of all sub-Saharan Africans fall into this income group while the largest number (528 million people) of the ultra-poor are in South Asia. At this income level, it is impossible to obtain adequate nutrition, health care, or education. In addition, appropriate investments to adequately care for the natural resource base are unaffordable. Because most rural inhabitants depend more heavily on natural resources than their wealthier peers for their livelihoods, this environmental degradation is particularly serious, and, in many cases, maps of environmental degradation and poverty align almost perfectly. Finding effective ways to avert environmental degradation and poverty is at the heart of CIIFAD's efforts. A multi-faceted approach including education, market development, biophysical, and social research on judicious use of natural resources, and policy development is required. At Cornell, CIIFAD was founded to bring together the people and organizations with the diverse expertise needed to address these problems.

Several initiatives are underway: the NSF-funded biocomplexity project in Kenya has examined the linkages between human and natural systems by studying poverty dynamics and land degradation in smallholder farms Kenyan graduate students and post-doctoral fellows have been supported and we have useful information on who becomes poor and what is needed for people to escape poverty. The African Food Security and Natural Resource Management Program, co-directed by C.B. Barrett and A.N. Pell and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, graduated seven of eight doctoral students within the four-year funding period with the last student scheduled to graduate this spring. A new initiative has begun in Afghanistan with two graduate students scheduled to begin their field work there later this spring. An Afghan student with an interest in Horticulture has been recruited for the masters of professional studies program starting in fall 2006. A core group including students and faculty from the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Animal Science, Applied Economics and Management, Horticulture, and Crop and Soil Science are actively seeking funds for expansion of this program. The West African Water Initiative with funding from the Hilton Foundation has continued to address problems of water scarcity in the Sahel with a focus on Mali. The Emerging Markets program under the direction of Ralph Christy continues to explore new ways to involve the rural poor in the modern economy. Links with nutrition and Weill have been made through application to the NIH Frameworks for Global Health program.

Workshops and seminars have been held in many parts of the world including presentations on conservation agriculture in Afghanistan, rice culture in many parts of Asia and Africa, poverty alleviation in Madagascar and Kenya, market development in South Africa, watershed management in the Philippines, university strengthening in Mexico, Ethiopia and Philippines, rural water supplies in Mali, and livestock-environment interactions in Bolivia. The intensity and duration of these partnerships is variable so it is very difficult to assess income or job generation, especially as many of these efforts are in collaboration with several partners.

Sustainable international rural development

• Private/Other (e.g., unrestricted funds, commodity groups, foundations, companies)
• College "start-up" funds

• C.B. Barrett
• Johannes Lehmann
• S.J. Riha
• Larry E. Blume
• Janice Thies
• R.D. Christy
• Norman Uphoff
• Terry Tucker
• Bob Blake
• Louise Buck