Lifting Society to Greater Heights
The Charles Valentine Riley Memorial Foundation (RMF) is committed to promote a broader and more complete understanding of agriculture and to build upon Charles Valentine Riley’s legacy as a “whole picture” person with a vision for enhancing agriculture through scientific knowledge.
RMF, founded in 1985, recognized that agriculture is the most basic human endeavor and that a vibrant, robust, food, agricultural, forestry, and environmental-resource system is essential for human progress and world peace.
RMF conducts a range of program activities that include discussion groups, round tables, workshops, briefing papers, and lectures on various parts of the food, agricultural, forestry, and environmental-resource system designed to “ to promote a broader and more complete understanding of agriculture as the most basic human
endeavor and to enhance agriculture through increased scientific knowledge.”
A major current RMF activity is a collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the World Food Prize Foundation (WFPF) to present an annual Charles Valentine Riley Memorial Lecture in Washington, DC.
The 2010 AAAS Lecture was presented by Roger Beachy, then Director of USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, on June 15, 2010. Dr. Beachy’s presentation on “Agricultural Research: Changing of the Guard, Guarding the Change” was followed by a panel discussion with Gebisa Ejeta, Purdue University and 2009 World Food Prize Laureate, and others. The 2011 Lecture was presented by Pamela C. Roland, Professor of Plant Pathology, University of California, Davis, on “Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the future of Food” with a panel discussion by Nina V. Fedoroff, President of AAAS and Pennsylvania State University, and others. View the proceedings of the 2010 lecture here, and the proceedings of the 2011 lecture here.
In 2011, RMF joined with the Farm Foundation NPF and five scientific societies to organize the Agriculture, Food, Nutrition, and Natural Resource R&D Round Table: Research Partnerships Yield Greater Societal Returns. Presentation of exemplary cases of collaboration were integrated with presentations of top level science administrators that included Catherine Woteki, Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, USDA, and Shere Abbott, then Associate Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, The Executive Office of the President, were featured speakers. View a summary of the round table and obtain a link to the full proceedings here.