Ronnie Coffman, a pathbreaking plant breeder and scientific leader who for five decades has confronted issues of famine and food insecurity in some of the poorest and most remote places in the world, has been elected professor emeritus, effective Aug. 16.
A globally recognized expert on food systems and development, Coffman has dedicated his career to supporting smallholder farmers and empowering marginalized communities. Colleagues describe Coffman as someone whose capacity to bring people together on equal footing forged a new model for plant breeding and agricultural development for the 21st century.
“Ronnie dedicated himself to plant breeding to aid the poorest farmers who have the least resources,” said Susan McCouch, Ph.D. ’90, who was advised by Coffman during her graduate program at Cornell and is now the Barbara McClintock Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS). “As a rice breeder, Ronnie developed improved varieties for farmers without access to irrigation, the ones working in the most challenging environments. He understood the hardships of living and working in those conditions.”
From first-generation student to pioneering researcher
Coffman himself grew up farming under difficult circumstances. Born in rural western Kentucky, Coffman was responsible for much of his family’s farm work from a young age while his father labored as a coal miner. With encouragement from his parents and high school teachers, Coffman attended the University of Kentucky, where, he said, “I found my calling in plant breeding.”
Eager to apply cutting-edge science to improve crops and combat hunger, Coffman entered Cornell’s influential Ph.D. program in plant breeding. As a doctoral student, Coffman went to CIMMYT in Mexico to work with Norman Borlaug, whose contributions to wheat breeding and the Green Revolution would earn him the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
Coffman adopted many of the strategies Borlaug pioneered with wheat and applied and expanded upon them for rice. In the 1970s he took a breeding position at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines.