A Challenge to Co-operation

IAALD, and those people whom this distinguished international organization has brought together for many years, is now reaching its arms practically around the whole world. Following political changes in central and eastern Europe that brought with them possibilities for travel and for the introduction of new information technologies, IAALD began to expand into our region. The Eighth IAALD World Conference in 1990 in Budapest considerably helped in this, as did the systematic and tireless efforts of  J. Howard, P. Andre, M. Pisa, K. Russel and other colleagues from NAL in Beltsville. These people - in a word, these missionaries - navigated many labyrinths in their work to organize the US/Central and Eastern European Roundtable, and succeeded in creating the friendly atmosphere of co-operation between the USA and the countries of central and eastern Europe that still binds us today.

When to this effort to link up and aid the development of agrarian informatics were marshalled, thanks to Anton Mangstl and Z.S. Karnicki, the forces of FAO, which supported the AGROINFOS '96 seminar in Nitra, it was necessary to react to this help by mobilizing our own resources. During AGROINFOS, the President of IAALD Mr Jan Van der Burg, Anton Mangstl, V. Pozdnyakov and other authors came up with a new venture. There then was brought into the light of day a new IAALD chapter for the twenty-one states of our European region, bound by history as much as by geography and political misfortune. The chapter, we sincerely hope, will go a long ways towards liberating our national intellectual potentials in the agricultural sector. It is the opening up of a new road through our old geography, and to travel along it will no doubt require many conceptual and organizational adjustments. But the shared feelings of need and spontaneity with which this work started up, thanks also to the young and ambitious ISTIA team in Nitra, will certainly give rise to many more inspirations. And I believe this spirit will help IAALD far beyond merely increasing the number of new members.

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