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Ford Foundation - General »
Ford Foundation Annual Report 1984
helped establish the International Irrigation Management
Institute with headquarters in Sri Lanka to conduct research, train
specialists, and disseminate information on ways to ensure
efficient and equitable distribution of irrigation water. We are
also working with national irrigation departments and
university-based specialists to help solve problems of water
management and poorly functioning irrigation systems in the Sudan,
Egypt, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere.
Rural policy:
A major focus of the Foundation's agricultural work for many years
has been to strengthen training in agricultural economics and the
rural social sciences in order to improve policy making and
planning for rural development. Of all the less developed
continents, Africa has the fewest researchers and institutions
capable of gathering and analyzing agricultural information. To
fill part of this void, the Foundation this year helped launch a
long-term effort to establish high-quality master's degree programs
in the rural social sciences in African universities and to provide
training abroad for more advanced students. Graduates of these
programs are expected to assume positions in thinly staffed
agricultural ministries.
The
Foundation's Work in Population
Complementing
the work just described, the Foundation has for more than thirty
years worked to reduce the pressure of growing populations on the
resources available to provide them with an adequate standard of
living. More than a quarter of a billion dollars has been spent for
activities designed primarily to enhance understanding of and to
cope with problems of excessive population growth in the developing
world. The largest share of the Foundation's population
commitments—about $150 million—supported research in
the reproductive sciences and the development of
contraceptives.
A second
major share of the Foundation's support for population activities
has assisted research and training in demography and other social
sciences related to population issues. Many research groups in the
United States, Europe, and the developing countries have received
support. The Foundation has provided core support for the
Population Council, the major private operating foundation
concentrating on the population problems of the developing world,
and for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the leading source of policy
research on reproductive health issues in the United States.
In the late
1960s, as large-scale funding for family-planning programs in the
developing world became available from governmental and
intergovernmental assistance agencies and from the developing
countries themselves, we phased out our general support for such
programs. By the early 1970s our work in family planning
concentrated on two types of assistance—an attempt to put
modern management