Exchanging ideas with global specialists to benefit us and them is part of the responsibility of both CALS researchers and educators. The following are examples from retiring faculty:

Street children in Brazil
As part of an International Youth Experience’s Youth Developers Institute, Becky Dahl spent two years exploring successful programs in North and South America. Most memorable was visiting efforts to help children living on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, including a 7-year-old lad and younger sister sent alone to the city each day to panhandle. “From them I learned that children thrive regardless of material possessions, as long as they have someone showing an interest in them.”

Potatoes in Israel, Pakistan
High-temperature stress resistance in potatoes was focus of a federally funded study Bob Dwelle ran, including cooperative field trials in both countries in collaboration with the UI Aberdeen Research and Extension Center.

UN seed testing
Bob Forster helped develop guidelines for the safe movement of small grain germplasm while serving on a committee of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. He also chaired a subcommittee of the International Seed Testing Association.

China trade
Jim Jones arrived at the UI in July 1975 when Lewiston had become a seaport and the first barges were plying the Columbia- Snake river system. A trade economist, Jones quickly focused on roles the rivers might play in intermodal ocean transportation. When China quarantined shipments of Pacific Northwest wheat, concerned over TCK smut, he worked closely with plant pathologists to understand the disease and analyze ways to isolate TCK-free wheat for overseas shipment.

Training youth in three countries
In 1984 Doug Pals developed an experimental learning program for New Zealand youth eager to be farmers, and helped develop a cadet training scheme for the N.Z. Pork Council. In 1991 he served on a USAID Institutional Development for Agricultural Training project at Egerton University in Kenya. And in 1993 he studied the feasibility of developing a Farmer Training Institute in Kazakhstan.

Pest management in China
In 1984 Bob Stoltz spent a sabbatical helping Chinese scientists establish economic thresholds for treating cereal aphids at Northwestern Agricultural University in China’s Shaanxi Province. He returned to China several times to learn about that nation’s potato, sugar beet, and alfalfa production systems; to present seminars on his Idaho efforts; and to design an integrated pest management program for wolfberries, a traditional Chinese medicine.

“Agriculture is much different in places where most of the world’s people live. You learn that … there may be other strategies and approaches than the ones we’ve been using here. Some of those alternatives go back 4,000 years.” –Bob Stoltz