David Hopper, the first president of Canada’s world-renowned International Development Research Council, had a vision of agricultural development in poor countries that was ahead of its time, say former colleagues.
He died in late November at age 84, hailed in life and death as one of the fathers of the Green Revolution that turned India and other southeast Asian countries into food surplus regions rather than regular victims of famine.
“He believed in scientists in developing countries having the ability to solve their own problems with their own solutions,” said Doug Daniels, a former IDRC colleague.
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“The prevailing wisdom at the time was that development in India was stopped because they weren’t picking up the new technology being developed in the North. Hopper said they were more rational than that, and the technology being developed was not meeting their needs.”
Gerald Bourrier, former assistant director of the IDRC agriculture division created by Hopper, said Dec. 8 the founding president was key in focusing the IDRC on the developing world’s agricultural needs and the need to help countries with food shortages become food self-sufficient.
“He was a strong advocate of supporting research to develop high-yielding so-called miracle grains,” said Bourrier. “He was instrumental in making that a focus of IDRC.”
Hopper died Nov. 22 in Washington, D.C., where he moved after leaving the IDRC to become vice-president of the World Bank until his 1990 retirement.
He worked for the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1960s, promoting the cause of new high yielding varieties for south Asian countries. His work led to his reputation as one of the fathers of the Green Revolution.
He was an agricultural economist who wrote a PhD thesis on the economics of food production and sustainability in a rural Indian village, where he lived for most of two years.
Hopper was hired as the first president of the IDRC when it was created in 1970 as a crown corporation, making certain that agricultural development was one of its four core mandates.
“His vision for development really was key to the mandate of the IDRC and how it has evolved and maintained itself,” said Daniels.
“At the time, he bucked conventional wisdom about the ability of the South to design its own solutions, and that has been a core value ever since. He was a great man.”
