Norman Uphoff

Norman Uphoff (born 1940) is an American social scientist now involved with agroecology serving as a Professor of Government and International Agriculture at Cornell University. He is the acting director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) 1990-2005.

Uphoff was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm. In 1966, he took his master's degree from Princeton University in public affairs. He then earned a doctorate in political science, public administration, and development economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, at which time he began teaching at Cornell University. There he chaired the Rural Development Committee until 1990 and worked on various aspects of participatory development: local organization, farmer associations, irrigation management, and other approaches to assisting small farmers in the developing world. In the 1980s, he served on USAID's Research Advisory Committee and the South Asia Committee of the U.S. Social Science Research Council, and for over four decades has been a consultant for the World Bank, USAID, the United Nations, FAO, the Ford Foundation, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and other agencies. After being appointed as the first director of CIIFAD in 1990, his work became focused more on strategies for sustainable agriculture and rural development. Professor Uphoff teaches the CIPA core foundation course, GOVT 6927: Planning and Management of Agricultural and Rural Development.

Uphoff is a subject-matter expert in development administration, irrigation management, local participation, and strategies for broad-based rural development. His interests have expanded beyond the social sciences to include new knowledge and practice in soil science and microbiology. In 1993 he became acquainted in Madagascar with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) through the NGO Association Tefy Saina. Farmers who used SRI methods, having gotten paddy yields averaging only 2 tons/hectare paddy with their usual methods, on soil that was evaluated as 'very poor,' without using new varieties and without depending on chemical fertilizer, and with less water, were able to average 8 tons/hectare. After such results were attained for three consecutive years, and were seen in other parts of Madagascar as well, Uphoff began trying to get agricultural specialists in other countries to use and evaluate the alternative SRI methods for themselves. In 1999-2000, SRI results were validated by rice scientists in China and Indonesia, and since then, the testing and dissemination of SRI has spread to almost 50 countries, showing how more rice can be produced with less water, less cost, and often less labor. But this agroecological methodology has not been without its critics and opponents.

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