Late last week the United States Senate confirmed the appointment of Chancellor Brady Deaton as the new chairman of the Board for International Food and Agriculture Development.

As the new chairman of BIFAD, Deaton will coordinate the thoughts and best efforts of a seven-member board working toward agricultural and technological innovation that will allow countries to feed themselves. He will use their collective knowledge to advise the U.S. Agency for International Development administrator.

“I’m very excited about it,” Deaton said. “It draws on my background quite nicely because of my professional interest in international agricultural development and economic development generally and so this enables me to blend that background with my more recent work in university administration.”

In the past he worked in the Peace Corps to teach vocational agriculture in Thailand. In 1978, Deaton was involved in studies examining the international food assistance programs of America’s Food Aid program. He worked with the Secretary of Agriculture in Washington D.C. at the time.

Deaton then worked to establish major technical support programs in Zambia and Haiti while working as the associate director of the Office of International Development for Virginia Tech. He has also worked with Grenada, Kenya and other low-income countries.

Deaton said working in various programs similar to these gives him adequate institutional knowledge to perform as the chairman for BIFAD. He added his background is probably what led to his appointment.

“I’ve had a lot of experience in organizing and building a framework for conducting research, conducting education and stimulating private sector development,” Deaton said. “This job brings all that together.”

More recently Deaton chaired the Commission on International Programs. His work there is to identify key issues in various universities seeking to provide more study abroad opportunities for students and more faculty research and technical work in other countries.

Deaton said working relationships between universities, especially international universities, is important since their faculty learns from MU’s faculty and MU from them.

“We’ve been very involved in supporting other educational institutions in various other parts of the world: Thailand, China, Korea especially and also in African countries,” Deaton said.

His principle goal is to ensure the best scientific and educational thinking from universities is brought together to determine how the development of knowledge is essential to food production and distribution around the world so people can feed themselves.

“All of this work has to be guided by a knowledge base and our role in BIFAD to ensure that higher education is doing everything possible to bring the best knowledge forward so that we can do a better job internationally,” Deaton said.

Deaton’s initial appointment will last through July 2012, but he will continue the job until a new chairman is appointed by the president.

“These are critical issues and that’s why it’s exciting because these are very critical issues for people around the world,” he said.