Obituary

Dana G. Dalrymple,
1932- 2018

Dana G. Dalrymple, a 36-year veteran of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), worked to improve farming practices worldwide. Most of his career was spent working for CGIAR, formerly the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research, which he supported soon after its inception in 1972.  As an agricultural economist, he shaped the policies, programs and budgets of the agency’s Washington headquarters and 16 international centers in South America, Africa and Asia, and he traveled to most of them.

Dalrymple, 85, died of complications from pneumonia on March 7 at his home in Washington, D.C. after suffering from dementia. Colleagues, friends and family will celebrate his life at a later date to be announced.

A life-long scholar, Dalrymple conducted original research, which, combined with his deep knowledge of the science and economics of agriculture, informed his federal and international service.  In his early career, he became an expert in Soviet agriculture; his 1964 article on the 1932-34 Soviet famine was the first general review of the subject and was regarded by colleagues as the “standard work on the topic for 20 years.”  From the late 1960s through the 1980s, he was the main researcher tracking the adoption of high-yielding crop varieties in the developing world.  In government, he was a primary advocate of Norman Borlaug’s theories of a “green revolution.”  As science policy advisor for USAID, he wrote many papers showing how science and research act as a force for public good.

In retirement, Dalrymple returned to an earlier interest in malarial control.  He compiled and published an extensive survey of research into the use of a Chinese medicinal herb, artemisia, in treating drug-resistant malaria.  To encourage the widest possible use of this work, he made his book freely available online. Artemisinin, ACTs and Malarial Control In Africa was reviewed favorably in Science magazine and a dozen other professional journals.

Partly because of that project, Dalrymple received the Outstanding Alumni Award in 2015 from the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, of which he was a 1954 graduate and active alumnus.

Dana Grant Dalrymple was born in Seneca Falls, N.Y., on Nov. 5, 1932 to Daniel M. Dalrymple and Esther Shappee Dalrymple.  His future was forseen by a family friend and author, Raymond F. Yates, who dedicated The Boy and the Battery (1942), a primer on electricity and magnetism, “To a little boy named Dana Dalrymple who shows an uncommon interest in the world around him.”