International visitors to Penn State link agriculture, democracy

Glen Cauffman, left, manager of Penn State farm operations and facilities, explains the operation of a reactor used in making biofuels to members of a Ukrainian delegation during a visit sponsored by the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

University Park, Pa. -- In a recent, busy day for Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, members of a delegation from Ukraine discovered that creating biofuels was easier than they expected, while agricultural envoys from Iraq learned how techniques from the century-old American tradition of cooperative extension can help them re-establish effective farms in their war-torn nation.

These delegations followed on the heels of a recent visit by another Ukrainian team, which followed visitors from Honduras, Poland and the Czech Republic. While the scheduling was a little tighter than normal, it was indicative of the increasing interest in Penn State and its College of Agricultural Sciences as a place where international teams come to simultaneously build agriculture and democracy.

The five-member team from Ukraine visited campus through the sponsorship of the Open World Leadership Center to review no-till farming and biofuel technologies. They stayed with host families, visited the Capitol in Harrisburg, traveled to local scenic and historic sites and took part in the United Nations Day Celebration Dinner.

Independently, the U.S. Department of State had approached the University to host an 11-person delegation from Iraq as part of its International Visitor Leadership program. As the only university on the group's itinerary during its two-week American visit, Penn State was selected to introduce Iraqi farmers and agricultural administrators to new technology and to demonstrate how a representative democracy uses its political institutions to support agricultural interests.

Deanna Behring, director of international programs for the college, said foundations and federally sponsored programs that traditionally have supported democratic institution-building programs are beginning to acknowledge that agriculture is at the heart of democracy building.

"If you have a strong cadre of young agricultural leaders, you have the foundation for democracy," she said. "Agricultural diplomacy can help with community-development issues in any country and I expect we will see even more of these types of visits in the future as the U.S. government introduces new policies and programs to address food security and stability."

According to Dean Bruce McPheron, the reason that the College of Agricultural Sciences seems to be the portal for connecting with Penn State goes back to the universal appeal of food, as well as the university's long-standing land-grant mission of turning scientific research into practical knowledge for the sustenance of a nation.

"Our college has grown up around that capacity, and it's a logical place to make these connections internationally," he said. "The magic of the land-grant mission is something that is transportable over time and space, and, as a representative of that mission, our college can establish a critical link to work with people in countries and cultures where there hasn't been this connection of generating new knowledge and disseminating it, through extension, to people who really need it."

McPheron noted the college has a long history of international activity.

"Our presence in China, for example -- now more than 100 years old -- is an indication of the staying power of what we can provide. We're not proposing to take the answer to other cultures, but rather to take the method of how you find the answer. I fully hope that, as we continue to address international opportunities through the college and university, we'll find more chances to help folks understand the power of the extension system and to work with them to implement their own versions of it."

The Ukrainian visit sprang from a talk by Penn State Farm Operations Manager Glen Cauffman on no-till and biofuel technologies to Ukrainian doctors, lawyers and engineers at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The occasion was a program commemorating Holodomor, a famine that killed as many as 10 million Ukrainians in the nation once considered the breadbasket of Europe.

Word of Cauffman's presentation reached members of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, who secured a grant from the U.S. Library of Congress to bring the team to the university in search of solutions to their nation's complex problems.

Ukrainian Yurii Karabadjak, commercial director for an agricultural economics firm, said one of the first surprises of his visit was how impressive the state and federal government buildings are, and how ordinary citizens would visit them solely for enjoyment.

"It was a great opportunity for me to take part in this program," he said through an interpreter. "I was surprised by the abundance of genetically modified corn and soy and how simple it is to make biofuels -- I could even do it at home!"

Iraqi Oday Othman Mahmood, chairman of the agricultural Rafedain Foundation, said his group came to Penn State to see examples of how non-governmental organizations can take advantage of the greatly improved situation in Iraq to rebuild the nation's thousands of farmers into a cohesive industry.

"As people look at global issues like climate change, renewable energy, natural-resource use, health and diseases, and hunger, everyone realizes that we have to work together in partnerships to solve them," Behring said. "People know that Penn State has the programs, and they are coming to us to initiate these partnerships."