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Penn State, University of Guanajuato Sign Cooperative Agreement"
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State University's College of Agricultural Sciences has joined forces with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and former state agriculture secretary Sam Hayes to host a large delegation from Mexico, officials reported yesterday. Also recently, the agricultural collegeĀ received three estate donations totalingĀ $2.4 million, officials said.Through the long-term efforts of Hayes and the state department, the College of Agricultural Sciences has established a five-year agreement with the Universidad de Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico, to develop collaborative cooperative extension, research and teaching opportunities. Guanajuato, a state just north of Mexico City in Mexico's agriculture belt, is an important water resource area for the country and also is politically important as the home state of Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, said Robert Steele, dean of the agricultural college.Deanna Behring, director of international programs for the college, pointed out that, climates aside, Pennsylvania and Guanajuato have several important aspects in common. "They both are important agricultural states with an abundance of small farms," she said. "Through the North American Free Trade Agreement, a lot of the small farmers in Mexico that used to produce corn can't compete with the large U.S. producers. So, they're having to shift into high-value fruit and vegetable crops. It's a common economic dislocation of NAFTA on small farmers in Canada, the United States and Mexico, and small farmers in the three nations need the tools to produce those high-value crops in an economically and environmentally friendly way."Behring cited plastic high-tunnel technology, agribusiness education and small-farm agricultural financing as possible areas of interest. "With financial support from Guanajuato's Ministry of Agriculture and other external funding sources, Penn State will assist in the rebuilding through faculty exchanges and graduate student training in applied research and extension techniques training," she said, adding that joint conferences, seminars and faculty-staff exchanges for research and extension are being planned as well.The partnership ties into the college's initiative to help Penn State students to see agriculture in the Latin American context, as more Hispanic farmers and workers arrive in the United States and particularly in rural areas, Behring said. "We want our students and faculty equipped to understand the realities of what our agricultural policy has meant in both countries and in Canada," she stated.The estate gifts include $1.1 million from the estate of Jessie C. Black, which will create graduate fellowships and support research;, and $668,000 from the estate of Frederick H. Brown, which will endow scholarships for graduate or undergraduate students studying floriculture. A total of $620,000 from the estate of John H. Crouch will create two Distinguished Graduate Fellowships and one Trustee Scholarship, officials said.Visit Penn State University: www.psu.edu"