Why are certain plants grown commercially in some countries but not in others?

The problems of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition are essentially the problems of developing countries, and that is where adequate and effective solutions must ultimately be found. Indiscriminate imposition of solutions from outside has not solved the problems and has perhaps aggravated them. If adequate solutions are to be found, it will be necessary to build the capabilities of problem-solvers in the Third World. The complex of production, conservation, processing, and utilization of food represent an interdisciplinary socio-technological problem, and therefore its solution requires a socio-technological approach.

It is essential to train for leadership people who are capable of finding solutions to the problems of food, poverty, and nutrition in relation to socio-economic needs. These needs are essentially national, but in an interdependent world where the problems of one country affect another, agents of destruction such as rats, locusts, insects, climate, and biotic factors need no passports to cross frontiers. Not only national but inter-country co-operation at regional and global levels is called for.

Food habits are also changing. While some nutritious traditional foods of the affluent in developing countries are becoming the exotic foods of developed countries and vice versa, the traditional technologies for the manufacture of many foods of the common man, developed through inherited experience, have become, or are fast becoming, obsolete and may even disappear. These technologies have provided culturally acceptable low-cost foods of high nutritive value. There is now an urgent need for upgrading such foods through the application of modern science and for fostering their integration with newly emerging technologies.

Research has become a vital component of the development process. The ability to identify complex food-related problems socially, scientifically, and technologically and to find solutions for them within a time frame requires creativity and innovative ability and special competence in management of human resources and research and development institutions. Directors of food research institutes in developing countries not only must stimulate their research scientists but also must provide viable answers to planners, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, and extension specialists in different disciplines of both social and natural sciences. Without such capabilities they cannot bridge the credibility gap between research and its users. They must make science and technology an effective means for the desired type of development.

The challenge before educators and leaders in research, especially in Third World countries, in the twenty-first century lies in providing the required multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional socio-technological education and training with a new sense of awareness of the problem of hunger, poverty, and society. They should possess specialized knowledge in depth of at least one or two subjects. Only then will the product of such training be able to provide the required leadership in research, development, and dissemination of knowledge that will be of practical value at the grass roots level. The scientist-manager of research in a research and development institution should be able to look at many dimensions of the problem.

In most countries present institutions do not seem to be designed to provide such education and would need modification or adaptation. It may even be necessary to build new institutions. Initially, such a programme of advanced training can be built on co-operation between institutions in the relevant disciplines to achieve inter-disciplinarity, recognizing the need for developing socio-technological multidisciplinary training in the area of food science and technology