THE HANDS THAT FEED US

In this memoir, a man chronicles a long career in international agriculture research and reflects on the system he was involved in for decades.

After spending a few years in the early 1970s teaching in the West Indies—MacNeil met his wife, Joan, in St. Lucia during this period—the author moved back to his native Canada and got a job in the agriculture division of the International Development Research Centre. There, MacNeil began a 45-year involvement with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a system first formally developed in 1971 that grew out of a need to study and cultivate tropical crops in the developing world that were largely neglected by the private sector. The author’s specific roles would change over the decades, but his link to CGIAR was a professional constant, including while he worked as a financial officer at the World Bank. In Washington, D.C., which housed the CGIAR Secretariat, MacNeil’s work took him all over the world—he lived in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, the Philippines, and France, and his broad experience allows him to paint a remarkably precise picture of the “institutional development puzzle,” a description as rigorous as it is complex. At the heart of his account is a portrayal of the “elaborate structure for governance, technical planning, and financial support” that formed the core of CGIAR, a discussion brimming with minute organizational details and a farrago of acronyms that will challenge the attentions of even the most patient readers. MacNeil makes a convincing case that the CGIAR enterprise is a uniquely impactful one and rightfully praises its “fifty years of distinguished service to humanity.” In addition, he succeeds in his aim to furnish a “non-ideological” assessment of the industry and is particularly even-handed in his appraisal of the triumphs and failings of the World Bank. But the memoir reads like a combination of a policy white paper and a narrated curriculum vitae—MacNeil submerges readers in infinitely granular minutiae, and the dizzying accounts of this or that organizational structure can be difficult to follow. This is an intelligent reflection, but it will likely only interest those engaged in international agriculture research.

A thorough discussion of a little-known agriculture research world that will appeal to experts.