- Cutting Poverty: Learning from the Leaders
- Taking Action against Climate Change in Ethiopia and South Africa
- Sprinkles Reduce Anemia Among Poor Children
- IFPRI Offers Bibliographic Database
- Map Your Collaborative Processes with Net-Map
- Remembering Dale Hathaway, IFPRI's First Director General
- Interview with Katherine Sierra, Vice President of Sustainable Development, The World Bank, and Chair of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
- Commentary: Urgent Action Needed for the World's Most Deprived
- Strengthening Communities, Reducing Poverty: Nigeria's Fadama Project
- 2020 Beijing Conference Supplement: Real Action to Reduce Extreme Poverty and Hunger
- Recent Publications
(PDF 78K)
IFPRI ForumDale E. Hathaway, the founding director general of IFPRI, passed away on September 29. He headed IFPRI from 1975 to 1977, guiding it in response to the world food crises and famines of the 1970s. Joachim von Braun, IFPRI's current director general, noted that "Dale has made a tremendous contribution by getting IFPRI started and putting it on a strong and independent path. Dale was a leading mind and actor in the national and global agricultural policy arena."
A specialist in agricultural trade economics, Hathaway was a professor at Michigan State University and a member of the Ford Foundation staff before he joined IFPRI. He represented the Ford Foundation at the World Food Conference, which was convened in 1974 in the wake of global food shortages. Thereafter Hathaway served as project officer for a food policy initiative on behalf of IFPRI's three founding institutions: the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the International Development Research Centre (Canada).
After getting IFPRI well on its way, Hathaway joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he became undersecretary for international affairs and commodity programs. Later he served as the executive director of the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy.
In 2005, looking back at IFPRI thirty years after its founding, Hathaway drew from his vast experience to propose four lessons about international trade. The fourth lesson describes well what he had in mind when he headed a newly established independent research institute in 1975: "Trade negotiations require continued support through impartial facts and analysis. Granted, trade negotiations will remain a political business. The idea that rationality will drive negotiations is an illusion. On the other hand, relying on solid and impartial facts will help us all to become more effective."