Latvia is a nation of about 2.4 million people living on 64,600 square kilometers of land, about 40% of which is devoted to agriculture and food production. Agriculture currently accounts for nearly 5% of Latvia’s gross domestic product and employs 15% of the labor force, with another 5% engaged in food processing. Principal products include grain, sugar beets, and potatoes, as well as vegetables and a variety of farm animals, mainly beef and pork.
As one of the newest members of the European Union, Latvia has chosen to align its economy with those of Western Europe and other market-oriented regions of the world. It must not only compete transnationally, but also struggle with all of the issues brought on by globalization and today’s rapid pace of technological change. These trends are particularly fast paced in the agricultural sector and are having major impacts on world food systems.
The application of biotechnology to agriculture is a case in point. These technologies have been broadly adopted in the United States and have found ready acceptance by American consumers. But they have triggered almost constant controversy in Europe for more than a decade. The European Union and its member states continue to debate the circumstances under which genetically improved crops can be planted, as well as accompanying issues dealing with trade. And European consumers are hesitant—even unwilling—to accept foods containing ingredients from genetically modified plants.
Latvia will increasingly confront these and related issues as it reorients its agricultural and food sector and strengthens ties within the European Union. This in turn has led to a pressing need to develop a capacity to understand and exploit agricultural biotechnology in its broadest context. Some of the issues are scientific in nature. There will be increasing opportunities to use biotechnology to strengthen Latvia’s private agricultural sector and perhaps extend it to exciting new biomedical applications. And as a signatory to international treaties such as the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the International Plant Protection Convention, and Codex Alimentarius, Latvia will need to maintain a high level of scientific literacy and understanding as they relate to global movement and regulation of foodstuffs and other agricultural materials.
There is also a need for Latvia to comprehend the deeper ramifications of biotechnology as they apply to agriculture. It was the fundamental lack of such understanding—particularly as it relates to consumers in Europe—that has led to many of the current trade difficulties with GMO crops. But there are other issues as well, many of which fall into the arena of policy. Intellectual property rights have moved to center stage as life forms have become patentable and as nations have become increasingly aware of their genetic resources and heritage. There are also vexing questions about consolidation of power in agriculture, the control of seeds and other genetic resources, and the future of our current production systems.
There is urgent need for Latvia to develop and sustain the capacity to deal with all of the issues surrounding biotechnology, so that it can take full advantage of the new technologies, but also implement sound agriculture and food policies. This proposal seeks to help create this capacity by strengthening the Latvia University of Agriculture at Jelgava.
The University and the Challenge
The Latvia University of Agriculture was founded in 1863 and adopted its present name and structure in 1990, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. As of 1998, a faculty of 170 served almost 3,500 full time students and nearly twice that number of part time students. The university is organized along traditional disciplinary lines, with a Faculty of Agriculture that houses production-oriented programs and a Faculty of Food Technology that houses programs in food science and nutrition. Both faculties offer undergraduate and graduate degrees.
The Faculty of Agriculture has expressed a desire to develop a specialization in biotechnology, one that would include undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as a continuing education element. Several faculty members at Jelgava have interests in biotechnology, and they have organized introductory as well as advanced courses and are offering them currently, both in Agriculture and in Food Technology. Faculty expertise and capacity are nevertheless limited, as is the availability of facilities and equipment.
From a planning standpoint, the challenge is to realistically develop such a specialization so that it aligns with the stated objectives of the university and also creatively exploits the institution’s resource base. The very best such plan would address the strategic opportunities for Latvia’s food and agricultural sector—and do so by positioning the university to serve national needs.
The Opportunity
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign proposes to strategically assist the Latvia University of Agriculture in enhancing its programs in agricultural biotechnology. A core team of experts as follows will provide leadership for the project:
Steven G. Pueppke, Team Leader. Dr. Pueppke is Director of ACES Global Connect, the international activities program of the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. Currently Associate Dean for Research, he is an expert in plant biotechnology and has interests in institutional development and strategy.
Bruce Chassy. Dr. Chassy is Executive Associate Director of the Biotechnology Center at the University of Illinois and is an expert in food biotechnology and in communicating biotechnology to consumers. The former head of our Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, he has written extensively about the adoption of biotechnology, as well as regulatory and safety issues.
Torbert Rocheford. Dr. Rocheford is a faculty member in the Department of Crop Sciences and an expert in plant genetics and breeding. He teaches courses in genetics and biotechnology and has published extensively on DNA markers in maize, gene discovery, and quantitative trait loci.
Richard Vogen. Mr. Vogen coordinates research and data planning systems in the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. An MBA candidate and former Director of International Operations for the U. S. Grains Council, he has extensive agricultural experience in Eastern Europe as well as expertise in institutional planning.
The team proposes a two-phase project to assist the Latvia Agricultural University. During Phase I, we will work with the Faculty of Agriculture to plan for the development of an area of curricular specialization in agricultural biotechnology, one that simultaneously addresses university and national needs. During Phase II, which will operate concurrently, we will exploit the resources of the University of Illinois to provide advanced training for biotechnology faculty at Jelgava. Such training will be needed to ensure that the Latvia University of Agriculture has the human capacity to manage and sustain the specialization in the future.
Phase I: Curriculum Development
In order to effectively assist the university in designing a curriculum in agricultural biotechnology, it will be necessary for the Illinois team to familiarize itself with the local situation in Latvia and develop close working relationships with personnel at Jelgava. We anticipate that a 5 to 7 day fact finding mission early during Year 1 would be sufficient to initiate this activity, which could be followed up by a series of e-mail exchanges to begin actually building the curriculum. The team will return to Latvia during Year 2 to assist with the early implementation phase.
The key initial priorities to be assessed by the team are as follows:
Needs. What is the demand for graduates of each of the curricular elements of the proposed specialization—undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education? In what ways is demand projected to change the future? And what combination of skill sets is most needed—technical expertise, an understanding of biotechnology impacts, knowledge of consumers, and/or the skills necessary to guide policy?
Institutional vision. What are the strategic goals of the Latvia University of Agriculture and particularly those of the Faculty of Agriculture? Has the university begun serious planning for the specialization? What are the views and aspirations of the people, especially the faculty, who would be expected to initiate and sustain the proposed curriculum?
Institutional assets. What are the facilities, equipment, and human resources that would be available to the proposed program? Are the English language capabilities of faculty and potential students adequate? What other capacity constraints exist, and how might they be overcome? And will the program be developed and supported solely by the Faculty of Agriculture, or will it be interdisciplinary and thus able to draw upon the resources of other faculties?
Our job while on the ground in Latvia will be to gather information from university faculty and others impacted by the program, match the quality and quantity of available assets with the stated program goals, and in a preliminary way, assess whether or not the plan for the curriculum is realistic. We can also provide an unbiased and objective appraisal of opportunities that may not be evident to the current planning group.
We are aware of the fact that the university attempted and ultimately failed to create a masters level program in plant biotechnology. Thus we must pay particular attention to the “scoping out” portion of the project during Phase I, realizing that it makes no sense to design an infeasible program that inadequately addresses opportunities and needs in Latvia.
A key task for the visit will be to discuss these possibilities with potential participants at the university, both to stimulate deeper thought and to initiate working relationships with those who will be charged with making the program a success. Although serious planning may begin during our time on the ground, we envision that most of this activity will take place over the ensuing months via e-mail. We will work with the Faculty of Agriculture during this period to craft a strategic vision for the specialization and a plan to initiate the new curriculum. We expect that this Phase I activity will require 6 to 9 months in total.
Plase II: Developing Human Resources
Coincident with formal planning of the new curriculum, we will design and begin to implement a training program for faculty at the university. Phase II will create the cohort of well qualified faculty needed to guide and sustain the new specialization in agricultural biotechnology. As described above, we lack crucial information on two interdependent factors that are key to the local situation in Latvia. One relates to needs for the program—the nature of the subject matter that potential graduates of the program must master. Similarly, we have not yet assessed the current skills of the program faculty—what they are already capable of teaching and which skills must be acquired to underpin the program.
The team will gather this information during the Phase I fact finding trip to Latvia, and use it as a basis for designing the Phase II training program. We nevertheless anticipate a probable need for two broad types of training, technical and contextual, and have begun to think about how University of Illinois resources could be of value for training Latvian biotechnologists.
Technical training. This would ideally be accomplished by bringing selected faculty from Jelgava to University of Illinois research laboratories, where they could engage in cutting edge science that is relevant to the proposed curriculum in Latvia. There are nearly thirty such laboratories in the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences, each led by an individual faculty member. Their technical interests range from genetics and plant breeding to gene function to tissue culture and plant transformation to bioinformatics. Individual faculty apply these technologies to a variety of different crops, including grains, vegetables, and fruits, and they address issues such as diseases and pests, weed control, crop quality improvement, foods and nutrition, and biomass. The depth and breadth of these programs is such that we can match one of our researchers with visiting scientists in virtually any conceivable area of agricultural biotechnology.
The University of Illinois also offers a stimulating and open scientific environment for those studying biotechnology. Individual academic departments host ongoing seminar series in biotechnology, and these are augmented by special lectures such as those in the Program of Physiological and Molecular Plant Biology. Workshops and hands-on training sessions are also routinely made available to scientists working on campus, as well as visitors. Among others, these include Biotechnology Center Workshops, INTSOY’s Education Training Programs in Processing and Utilization of Grain Legumes, and the annual Breeder’s School hosted by the Illinois Maize Breeding and Genetics Laboratory. The university library, the largest of any public institution of higher education in the United States, is also superb. In short, there are unlimited options for faculty from Jelgava to spend productive time in residence at the University of Illinois, preparing themselves to undertake a new curriculum in biotechnology.
Contextual training. This would include the possibility of exposing faculty from Jelgava to subject matter that deals more with the impacts of biotechnology than with science per se. Included in this category are issues that will become increasingly crucial for countries such as Latvia: the impact of intellectual property rights on commercialization of agricultural biotechnology, the relationship between public policy and the economic success of new biotechnologies, the role of consumer acceptance in movement of the products of biotechnology to the marketplace, as well as risk assessment as it relates to the flow of products of biotechnology into the environment and food chain.
While in residence at the University of Illinois, faculty from the Latvia University of Agriculture will have access to experts here with ongoing programs of research and instruction in each of these categories. Professors Brian Endres and Jay Kesan are experts in intellectual property and agricultural biotechnology as they apply, respectively, to trade and patent law. Professor Robert Thompson, formerly of the World Bank, is creating a new program in agricultural policy. Professors Brian Wansink and Joost Pennings are experts on consumer acceptance and risk assessment, both in the United States and Europe.
The University of Illinois has also created interdisciplinary and inter-institutional programs that would enrich the experiences of visiting faculty from Latvia. We host an interdisciplinary USDA-funded Program in Agricultural Genome Science and Public Policy Training, and the European Union has funded an EU Center on campus to strengthen ties with Europe. The latter organizes conferences on agricultural biotechnology and provides high level linkages to the European Union. Our college also has ongoing research relationships with European institutions such as INRA in France, the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, and the University of Hohenheim in Germany. Each is a potential contributor to develop linkages with Latvia.
Training model. Given anticipated personnel constraints at the Latvia Agricultural University, we propose a Phase II training model that would bring each of two qualified faculty to the University of Illinois for periods of 6 months each. Timing of the visits and program emphases would be worked out later after discussions with officials in Latvia and potential host faculty here.
Potential Enrichment Experiences
Depending upon the wishes and needs of university officials in Latvia, members of the Phase I Illinois team would be willing to participate in lectures and academic discussions involving our areas of expertise, both with students and faculty in Latvia. If advisable, we will coordinate our travel schedules to mesh with the academic calendar at Jelgava, so that these interactions are facilitated.
The College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois would also be willing to consider admitting qualified Latvian students for formal graduate study in biotechnology. We realize that this lies beyond the scope of the current proposal and would be dependent on a number of factors, including finances, visa requirements, and the existence of common research interests. We nevertheless have found that such interests frequently develop as a natural consequence of projects such as that proposed here, and so we would be willing to facilitate placement of Latvian students into our degree programs whenever possible.