Forrest F. "Frosty" Hill

Foreost F. "Frosty" Hill was governor of the Farm Credit Administration, a professor of land economics and provost of Cornell University, and one of the key figures of the Green Revolution at the Ford Foundation. In that role, he helped found the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).


 * "Forrest "Frosty" Hill received a Bachelor's degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1923, and a Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from Cornell in 1930. Early in his career, he assisted the new Farm Credit Administration (FCA) in Washington, D.C. The FCA was created to finance farm loans during the Depression and to help bail out local banks whose assets were tied up in farm mortgages. He was the governor of the FCA for several years before returning to Cornell in 1940.


 * "For 25 years he served Cornell as a professor of land economics, as chairman of the Department of Agricultural Economics, and as provost of the university. He was involved in studies designed to identify areas of New York State where farming was likely to remain unprofitable because of poor terrain and poor roads. "Frosty" was as much concerned with the families displaced from agriculture as with the land made obsolete because of the technical changes in farming. As provost, he operated under a deficit for most of his tenure, and he became frustrated with the lack of funds. He was very much concerned about the status of the faculty and with improving salaries, stating, "If you don't have a good faculty, you haven't got a good university."


 * "In 1955, Provost Hill resigned from Cornell to be the vice president of overseas development for the Ford Foundation and spent several years working in newly developing countries, where he helped establish international research centers to study how to increase yields on food crops. In 1962 he became chairman of the board of the International Rice Research Institute and was instrumental in seeking and obtaining funding for this and other international agricultural institutes.


 * "Hill retired to Ithaca in 1976 and died in 1988. In his eulogy, Provost Hill was described as a "Cornellian who helped feed the hungry around the world."

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Ford Foundation
 * Green Revolution