An Approach to Solving World Food Problems

Abstract

Approaches to solving food problems have often been too specific, both here at home and abroad. In developing countries, chronic food problems have often been attacked with a technology, the adoption-diffusion of which, if nonappropriate to mores and customs of the people, has in the long-run been counter-productive. Through the World Food Institute at Iowa State University, we propose to identify problems, analyze them, bring competencies to bear on solving them, provide a continuing feed-in of educated, competent people geared to a problem-solving, interdisciplinary attack, and study the interrelationships to Iowa and the United States. We propose a continuing thrust from our University utilizing pertinent components of the land-grant mission which permitted problems to be solved in Iowa. Through this outward thrust in the broader, international scale, we hope to improve the nutrition and hope for hunger avoidance of humans elsewhere, and simultaneously thereby to increase our own understanding. We look to the peaceful interchange of food-related knowledge which, in the ultimate, knows neither borders nor political leanings.