Larry Harrington
CIIFAD Professor
Contact Information
lwharrington@gmail.com
Background
AguaClara Board of Advisors: Term April 2008 - April 2011
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Harrington has spent most of his professional level working overseas, commencing with a five year Peace Corps assignment to Guatemala in the early 1970s. After earning a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University in 1980, he began a 25 year career at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Spanish language acronym CIMMYT). During this time he worked as Training Officer, Regional Economist for Asia, Director of the Natural Resources Program, and finally Director of the Intensive Agroecosystems Program. His professional work with CIMMYT focused on agroecosystems diagnosis and sustainable improvements in agroecosystem productivity. He has implemented or managed research projects on sustainable systems in Bangladesh, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Zimbabwe. From 1996 to 2005, he had had oversight responsibility for the Rice Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, and ecoregional program which won the King Baudouin Prize in 2004. This Consortium has fostered the use of conservation agriculture practices on over 5 million acres in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Retiring from CIMMYT in 2005, Harrington became Senior Advisor to the Program Coordinator for the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food, a five year $50 million program focusing on poverty, food security, and water productivity in nine major river basins in developing countries. At the same time, he provided consulting services to the Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and the European Union. In 2008, he was awarded an Adjunct Professorship in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell University.