05/05/2004

AU Professor Named to National Academy of Sciences Committee

AUBURN, Ala. — Greg Traxler, an Auburn University agricultural economics professor and Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station researcher in the College of Agriculture, has been named to a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee examining how agricultural biotechnology can be used to address key global problems including food security, health, pollution and natural resource conservation.

The nine-member Global Challenges and Directions for Agricultural Biotechnology committee will meet in Washington, D.C., this month to finalize plans for a workshop by that name that will be held in the summer. Traxler, who has made presentations to the NAS on issues of research policy on three previous occasions, was appointed to the committee based largely on his expertise in the economics of biotechnology innovation, intellectual property and research policy.

Also this month, Traxler will present remarks regarding biotechnology’s impacts on agricultural productivity at both a ministerial conference in San José, Costa Rica, and a World Bank workshop in Washington.

The ministerial conference, co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, will bring 20 ministers of agriculture and of science and technology together with agricultural scientists to focus on using scientific and technological advances to increase agricultural productivity.

At the World Bank workshop, Traxler and other noted economists and policy experts from around the world will make presentations that will be used to draft an in-depth report on the relationship between rural development and national development in Latin America and the Caribbean and that eventually will be used to help direct World Bank lending policy in the region.

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu

05/05/04

For immediate release