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FARMING SYSTEMS: CLIENTELE AND PROBLEMORIENTED RESEARCH OF THE FSR/E TEAM
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH FLORIDA FSR/E PROJECT
The North Florida FSR/E Project has a history dating to the late 1979s, with interest in the approach among some administrators in IFAS extending back to the early 1970s. It was in these early years that International Programs in IFAS, under the leadership of Hugh Popenoe, began to develop a strong interdisciplinary focus.
Certain key individuals, later to play roles in developing farming systems at Florida, were already involved in interdisciplinary work in developing countries. There, they made their initial connections with one another. Peter Hildebrand, an agricultural economist, worked with Chris Andrew, also trained in economics, in Colombia on a University of Nebraska contract. Andrew later moved into International Programs as assistant director to Hugh Popenoe. Both helped in bringing "ildebrand and farming systems to Florida. Hildebrand first made contact with Edwin French in El Salvador, on a project directed by the University of Florida. French, then serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, was trained in horticulture and agronomy and was to become the North Florida Project's team administrator. He and Hildebrand experimented with multicropping systems in El Salvador which later became widely used in the region.
In the mid-1979s, Hildebrand joined the Rockefeller Foundation and moved on to ICTA, in Guatemala, where he pioneered the Sondeo and other farming systems techiques. There he worked with Romiro Ortiz, an agronomist at ICTA, who was later to come to Florida to work on his doctoral degree. French had meanwhile returned from El Salvador to obtain his doctoral degree at Texas A and M, then went to Bolivia, under a Florida contract. Around the same time (late 1970s), Marilyn Swisher, trained in geography and soils science and who was one of Popenoe's students, began research at CATIE, in Costa R ica, where she associated with Francisco Romero, an animal scqigntist who a-1S-w-ii to cd i--:olorida o-obtafin his doctorate. 
- This-was -Me -state -1T-f[Ta -When Florida initiated
establishment of a farming systems project in the late 1970s. in December, 1979, Hildebrand, still with the Rockefeller Foundation, arrived at Florida to discuss farming systems with IFAS faculty and prepare to teach a course on the subject while on Sabbatic leave. Hildebrand was asked by IFAS administrators to d eilzp-a-d=wtic and international farming systems program