more options

About "Frosty" Hill

"Frosty" Hill was one of the founders and leaders of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research). In the 1960s, while vice president for overseas operations of the Ford Foundation, he collaborated with George Harrar of the Rockefeller Foundation to establish IRRI (International Rice Research Institute), CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), IITA (International Institute of Tropical Agriculture), and CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture). In 1971 he was instrumental in gaining international support for the creation of the CGIAR Secretariat. His contribution to the system continued through his membership on various CGIAR center boards.

Reflecting on his career in 1983, Dr. Hill (known as "Frosty" by his colleagues) told an interviewer, "I obtained more satisfaction from the work with the international research groups than anything else I have done in my lifetime. There is now in existence an international network of agricultural research institutes that work on all the principal food crops. If population continues to increase at its present rate, it is difficult to see how we will avoid being out of food in the years ahead, but some time has been gained in which to try to solve the problem. "

In addition to his work with the Ford Foundation and the CGIAR, "Frosty" Hill had a distinguished academic career. At Cornell University, he was professor and chair of the Department of Agricultural Economics, and later, University Provost. He served as president of the American Agricultural Economics Association and was a Fellow of the Association. His dedication to agricultural development, and his conviction that education is essential to this process, was rooted in his early work on limited-resource farming in New York State.