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Report of the
INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL PROJECTS COMMITTEE
August 22, 1967
The following recommendations are presented to the Council of the
American Phytopathological Society for consideration and appropriate action.
RECOMMENDATION No. 1:
The world population explosion will in all likelihood continue unabated
for at least two more decades. The administrator for the U. S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) , Mr. W. S. Gaud, recently said that "We
may begin to see some marked decrease in the birth rate by the 1980s' (italics his).
The result will be a world population doubling in less than 35 years. To double
the world's agricultural production in a similar period is a staggering thought
for the agriculturalist.
If the developing nations are to be fed, those nations must make their
own fields more productive. It is not necessary to debate here whether or not
they will be able to feed themselves. But it is important for the plant
scientist to recognize that the pressure to seek ever-more production out of
the same land will increase constantly in the future.
Agricultural development programs will urge more and more inputs (water,
improved varieties, fertilizer, etc. ) in order to increase unit production on
lands now in use and promote the opening of new lands in areas that will subject
crop plants to generally untested environments. Foreign aid efforts will
increasingly try to offer these inputs and to make these colonization programs
possible. This means:
a )
greater plant populations per acre,
b )
greater effort to obtain two and three crops per year from the
same land,
C )
greater pressure to shorten testing schedules of new production
techniques (e.g., resistant varieties, pesticides), and
d) greater use of fertilizers to maximize crop yields.
Thus, during the next two decades, the world will undoubtedly be in greater
danger of severe epiphytotics than it has been at any time during the past two
generations. Few countries have reserves on hand to offset a serious seasonal
drop in food output. For a score of nations today, a poor crop in two
successive years could destroy a decade of development progress.
There is nothing that could push plant pathology into the forefront of
international thinking more quickly than to have a sudden loss of 20 per cent
of Asia's rice crop due to a new race of Piricularia oryzae or to have

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