Robert B. Daugherty, the founder of Valmont Industries Inc., has provided a tremendous gift to launch one of the University of Nebraska’s most ambitious and impressive initiatives, the Water for Food Institute.
As we said here last December about this important new step by NU, “The institute will focus on finding new ways to use water efficiently in food production. That’s right up Nebraska’s alley.”
The institute, lifted up by Daugherty’s generous, visionary $50 million gift, will build on one of NU’s long-standing strengths in water research and policy. The Water Center at UNL’s School of Natural Resources is more than 40 years old, for example, and the department’s National Drought Mitigation Center has a sterling scientific reputation.
As NU President J.B. Milliken has noted, this new center will pioneer a field that no other institution is studying in depth: the multiple connections between water use and agricultural production. And the eventual benefits for world agriculture could extend in countless ways, whether the question is, for example, cotton farming in sub-Saharan Africa, irrigation efficiency in the Middle East or drought mitigation in Australia.
In other words, in coming years when private aid organizations and governments from around the globe want to understand the latest findings on water use and farm production, they will look to the University of Nebraska. In fact, this is already happening. NU hosted an international conference on these issues last year, attracting scientists, consultants and policy-makers from around the world.
The Water for Food Institute, though headquartered in Lincoln, will be a university-wide endeavor involving work in education, research and policy. This initiative also will complement NU’s important system-wide goal of promoting “global engagement” among the university’s students encouraging them to understand global conditions and our region’s many connections to the rest of the world.
From the beginning, this new NU initiative has received positive attention from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is now the largest private institution aiding developing countries. Nebraska native Jeff Raikes, the CEO of the foundation, will serve on the NU institute’s board of advisors.
Nebraskans can be proud of this new NU initiative. In coming decades, Nebraska will be at the center of providing invaluable help to farmers worldwide.
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
