Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Managing Food Price Volatility: Approaches at the Global, National and Household Levels

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What does price instability have to do with food security? Price spikes hurt poor consumers, price collapses hurt farmers, and price risks reduce investment. Timmer's work suggests that food price instability also has a deeper and more insidious impact: it slows down economic growth and the structural transformation that is the pathway out of rural poverty. Food price instability really hurts the poor in both the short run and the long run.

"Food security is not a viable social objective unless it is also a profitable undertaking for input suppliers, farmers, and marketers of output. Consumers must then be able to afford to purchase this food, secure in the knowledge that it is safe and nutritious. Achieving food security within these constraints of a complex economic system is a challenge because both poor consumers and small farmers must be effective participants."                                     -- Peter Timmer

Thom Jayne, Professor of International Development at Michigan State University, will join the conversation as a discussant following the main presentation. 

Biography

C. Peter Timmer is a leading authority on agriculture and rural development who has published widely on these topics. He has served as a professor at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A core advisor on the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, Timmer also works with several Asian governments on domestic policy responses to instability in the global rice market. He is an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development issues.

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Bechtel Conference Center

Peter Timmer

Center on Food Security and the Environment
Encina Hall East, E400
Stanford, CA 94305

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Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, Harvard University
2720_image_PeterTimmerpg.jpg

C. Peter Timmer was a visiting professor at Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment in 2007. He is a leading authority on agriculture and rural development who has published widely on these topics. He has served as a professor at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A core advisor on the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, Timmer also works with several Asian governments on domestic policy responses to instability in the global rice market. In 1992, he received the Bintang Jasa Utama (Highest Merit Star) from the Republic of Indonesia for his contributions to food security. He is an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development issues.

Timmer's work focuses on three broad topics: the nature of "pro-poor growth" and its application in Indonesia and other countries in Asia; the supermarket revolution in developing countries and its impact on the poor (both producers and consumers); and the structural transformation in historical perspective as a framework for understanding the political economy of agricultural policy. 

Peter Timmer Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, at Harvard University Speaker
Thom Jayne Professor of International Development Commentator Michigan State University
Symposiums
Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

China’s Seafood Marketplace—Our Common Future (Aquaculture and Feed Use in China)

Roz Naylor will present a seminar on "China's Seafood Marketplace--Our Common Future (Aquaculture and Feed Use in China" as part of the 2011 Seafood Summit: Responsibility without Borders?.

2011 Seafood Summit, Vancouver, BC

Rosamond L. Naylor

The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-5697 (650) 725-1992
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Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Roz_low_res_9_11_cropped.jpg PhD

Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security. 

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Seminars

Emerging Land Issues in African Agriculture: Toward the identification of appropriate rural development strategies

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Thom Jayne, Professor of International Development from Michigan State University will answer the following questions: What are the trends in land access? How can smallholder farmers get higher value out of scarce land and how does that relate to food and non-food markets? Smallholder vs. large enterprises in Africa. Derek Byerlee, independent scholar and director of the 2009 World Development Report will provide additional commentary.

Thomas Jayne's professional career has been devoted to promoting effective policy responses to poverty and hunger in Africa. Jayne is Professor, International Development, in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics and a member of the Core Faculty of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. He is involved in research, outreach, and capacity building programs in collaboration with African universities and government agencies, mainly focusing on food marketing and trade policies and their effects on sustainable and equitable development. Jayne's secondary research focus has been on measuring the current and long-term effects of HIV/AIDS on African agriculture. Jayne sits on the editorial boards of two development journals, received a top paper award in 2004 by the International Association of Agricultural Economists, co-authored a paper (with graduate student Jacob Ricker-Gilbert) awarded the T.W. Schultz Award at the 2009 International Association of Agricultural Economists Triennial Meetings, and received the 2009 Best Article Award in Agricultural Economics (with co-authors Xhying Xu, William Burke, and Jones Govereh). Jayne's work has also been recognized at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome and the Secretariat of Global Agricultural Science Policy for the Twenty-First Century.

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Bechtel Conference Center

Thom Jayne Professor of International Development Speaker Michigan State University
Derek Byerlee Independent Scholar and Director, World Development Report, 2009 Commentator
Symposiums
Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

Why Has Africa Been Slow in Developing its Agriculture?

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Ousmane Badiane, Director for Africa at IFPRI, will talk about the investment and policy strategies needed for a dynamic agricultural sector, and how conditions in Africa differ from those in Asia.

Peter Timmer, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, at Harvard University, will join the conversation as a discussant following the main presentation.

Biography

Dr. Ousmane Badiane is the Africa Director for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). In this role, he coordinates IFPRI's work program in the areas of food policy research, capacity strengthening, and policy communications in Africa. He is also in charge of IFPRI's partnerships with African institutions dealing with the above areas.

Dr. Badiane, a national of Senegal, was Lead Specialist for Food and Agricultural Policy for the Africa Region at the World Bank from January 1998 to August 2008. He previously worked at IFPRI as Senior Research Fellow from 1989 to 1997, when he led the institute's work on market reforms and development. While at IFPRI, he taught, as adjunct professor, at Johns Hopkins' School of Advance International Studies from 1993 to 2003. Dr. Badiane received a Masters Degree and PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Kiel in Germany.

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Bechtel Conference Center

Ousmane Badiane Director for Africa Speaker IFPRI

Peter Timmer

Center on Food Security and the Environment
Encina Hall East, E400
Stanford, CA 94305

0
Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, Harvard University
2720_image_PeterTimmerpg.jpg

C. Peter Timmer was a visiting professor at Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment in 2007. He is a leading authority on agriculture and rural development who has published widely on these topics. He has served as a professor at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A core advisor on the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, Timmer also works with several Asian governments on domestic policy responses to instability in the global rice market. In 1992, he received the Bintang Jasa Utama (Highest Merit Star) from the Republic of Indonesia for his contributions to food security. He is an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development issues.

Timmer's work focuses on three broad topics: the nature of "pro-poor growth" and its application in Indonesia and other countries in Asia; the supermarket revolution in developing countries and its impact on the poor (both producers and consumers); and the structural transformation in historical perspective as a framework for understanding the political economy of agricultural policy. 

Peter Timmer Speaker
Symposiums
Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

Improving Food Security in the 21st Century: What are the Roles for Firms and Foundations

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Video clips (12 min)

February 10th marked the launch of FSE's new Global Food Policy and Food Security symposium series. The opening session featured Jeff Raikes (CEO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and Greg Page (CEO, Cargill), who presented their views on global food security and the roles of the private sector and foundation community. Stanford President John Hennessy provided the opening remarks. Click herefor a news summary of the event.


Speaker biographies

Greg Page, CEO Cargill Corporation

Greg Page serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Cargill. Cargill, a leader in agribusiness, is one of the largest privately held corporations in the world, with 131,000 employees in 66 countries, and with 2010 revenues of $108 billion. He was elected chairman of the board on Sept. 11, 2007, and CEO on June 1, 2007. He continues to hold the office of president, a position to which he was elected in June 2000. He was elected to the Cargill Board of Directors in August 2000.

Page joined Cargill in 1974 as a trainee assigned to the Feed Division. Over the years, he held a number of positions in the United States and Singapore. Page worked with the start-up of a poultry processing operation in Thailand, the beef and pork processing operations of Cargill's Excel subsidiary in Wichita, Kansas, and the Financial Markets Group in Minneapolis.

Page serves as a member of Eaton Corporation's board of directors. He serves as chair of the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Page received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of North Dakota. He was born in Bottineau, N.D.

Corporate Responsibility at Cargill

Jeff Raikes, CEO Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Jeff Raikes, chief executive officer, leads the foundation's efforts to promote equity for all people around the world. He sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners for all three of our program groups.

Before joining the foundation, Raikes was a member of Microsoft's senior leadership team, which sets overall strategy and direction for the company. Raikes was president of the Microsoft Business Division and oversaw the Information Worker, Server & Tools Business and Microsoft Business Solutions groups. He previously served as group vice president of the Worldwide Sales and Support Group, where he was responsible for providing strategic leadership for Microsoft's sales, marketing, and service initiatives. Before that, he served as senior vice president of Microsoft North America.

Raikes joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager and was instrumental in driving Microsoft's applications marketing strategy. Promoted to director of applications marketing in 1984, Raikes was the chief strategist behind the company's success in graphical applications for the Apple Macintosh and the Microsoft Windows operating system and the creation of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications. Before joining Microsoft, he was a software development manager at Apple Computer Inc.

Raikes, a Nebraska native, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University. He and his wife, Tricia, have three children. They are founders of the Raikes Foundation and are active members of the United Way of King County, where they served as co-chairs of the 2006-2007 fundraising campaign. Raikes also serves on the board of directors for Costco Wholesale Corp. and the Microsoft Alumni Foundation, where he is chair of the board.

Adding special relevance to his participation today, Raikes is an active owner of a large farming and cattle-feeding operation in Nebraska.  For the last three years, he has also been a guest lecturer in Stanford's "World Food Economy" course, and he is slated to perform in that role again tomorrow.

Gates Foundation Agricultural Development Program

Mackenzie Conference Room
Room 300, Huang Building

Greg Page CEO Speaker Cargill Corporation
Jeff Raikes CEO Speaker Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Symposiums
Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

Climate Change and Food Security: Adapting Agriculture to a Warmer World

Paragraphs

Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world's poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data.

This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate's effects on food security. It explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

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Publication Type
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Springer
Authors
David Lobell
Marshall Burke
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978-90-481-2952-2
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Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: The Role of Crop Wild Relatives

This meeting is the third in a series of consultations between agricultural scientists (in particular those interested in the conservation and use of crop diversity in plant improvement) and climate scientists on how to adapt agriculture to climate change. The first meeting, also held at Bellagio (3-7 September 2007), looked at the Conservation and Use of Global Crop Genetic Resources in the Face of Climate Change. It identified three major challenges facing the adaptation process: collecting crop diversity before it disappears, using it to breed better adapted crops, and informing key players of the increased need for the conservation and effective use of crop genetic resources in the face of climate change.

The second meeting, held at Stanford University on 16-18 June 2009, looked more specifically at breeding, and in particular at Climate Extremes and Crop Adaptation. Among other things, it recommended that efforts to develop heat tolerant varieties of the major cereals be intensified, and that greater investments be made in genotyping and phenotyping the variation already held in genebanks, and in collecting remaining diversity.

This third meeting in the series, and second at Bellagio, focused on a specific area of intersection between the ground covered by the previous consultations: the role of plants that are closely related to crops but are not themselves cultivated (crop wild relatives, or CWRs for short) in breeding varieties better adapted to future climates. The following questions were asked:

1) What is the evidence for the value of wild relatives in breeding for tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses in general, and heat and drought tolerance in particular? Are there specific crops where we can anticipate that the collecting and or use of crop wild relatives will be of particular importance in the context of climate change?

2) What are the most useful techniques for identifying gaps in collections of crop wild relatives, what are the areas and populations most threatened by climate change, and areas and populations most likely to yield materials with traits of interest to breeders (especially drought and heat resistance)? And what R&D is needed to improve these techniques or create new, more effective ones?

3) In what form would breeders ideally want genebanks to provide them with crop wild relatives material? What specific changes in the current way genebanks and breeders do business and interact will be necessary to make this happen? What options exist to sustainably finance efforts to collect, conserve and use crop wild relatives, and to expand pre-breeding efforts?

Three specific goals for the proposed meeting. The first is to inform a strategic plan being developed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the Millennium Genebank, Bioversity International and the CGIAR Centres to ensure the ex situ conservation of priority crop wild relatives and their long-term availability and use in climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. The second will be broader set of policy briefs for the crop development community, and the third will be a series of publications that summarize the work leading up to and resulting from the meeting.

Rockefeller Conference Center
Bellagio, Italy

Conferences
Prioritizing Investments in Food Security Under a Changing Climate

New FSE publication examines the impacts, costs, and opportunities for sustainable agriculture in Brazil

Authors
Luiz Martinelli
News Type
News
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In this paper, FSE visiting fellow Luiz Martinelli, along with FSE director Rosamond L. Naylor, Peter Vitousek, and Paulo Moutinho, contrasts the country's agricultural system with its oppressive record of income and land inequalities and environmental degradation. The authors discuss ways to reconcile economic, social, and environmental goals. Brazil faces this challenge and opportunity with other tropical developing countries--and with success, it could become a role model to other nations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
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