Dennis Garrity

Ex-officio member, Board of Trustees
United States
Joined : October 2001

Dr Garrity assumed the director general's position in October 2001 and became an ex-officio member of the Board. He is also the chair of the CGIAR Inter-Centre Working Group on Climate Change.

Previously Dr Garrity was the regional coordinator of our Southeast Asia Programme, based in Bogor, Indonesia. He led systems improvement research in the humid tropics of the region to develop and evaluate agroforestry alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture, and conducted research on the development of conservation-oriented agroforestry systems for sloping uplands. He has been active in the development of institutional innovations related to farmer-led organizations in sustainable agriculture and natural resources management.

Dr Garrity has a BSc degree in agriculture from Ohio State University, an MSc in agronomy from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, and a PhD in crop physiology from the University of Nebraska. He served as agronomist/crop ecologist and head of the Agroecology Unit at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines between 1982 and 1992.