The 1968 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service

Born on February 2, 1899 in Mie Prefecture, Prof. TOBATA, as the son of a landowning family, in his youth became attuned to the seasonal rhythm of farming. Whereas most young men of his circumstance aimed for high government position with its prerogatives, he chose to study and later teach agriculture at Tokyo University. Intent upon discovering how land use and crops had evolved elsewhere, he continued his education in Germany and the United States and returned to become a pioneer in agricultural economics.

As his scholarship won adherents, TOBATA'S advice increasingly was sought by fellow academicians, technicians and government officials. In his advisory role he made important contributions to development of agricultural science and research and to charting Japanese agricultural policies.

Alert to the injustices and technologically crippling effects of a feudal land tenure system that the Meiji Restoration had left almost untouched, TOBATA became a champion of land reform. Attempted without success after the close of World War I, reform was accomplished with support from the Allied Occupation after 1945. As the transformation awakened peasant initiative, TOBATA helped devise government action to promote basic democratic ideas through cooperatives, education and demonstration. The Japanese farmer's wife, known formerly as the "hornless cow," also became his concern as he worked for her liberation and acceptance as a full-fledged partner in family decision-making.

With the triumph of sound policies and technology that enabled Japan's farmers to support accelerated industrialization, TOBATA turned his efforts to helping developing lands. Through the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs, he and his associates began assembling data on their own experience and on actual potentials and problems facing farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Sending abroad yearly more than 20 scholars to gather basic facts, the Institute is beginning systematically to provide information applicable in other lands. Now retired from teaching, TOBATA devotes himself to encouraging understanding of the fundamental role of a healthy agriculture in promoting national and regional progress.

In electing SEIICHI TOBATA as the 1968 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his incisive contributions toward modernization of Japan's agriculture and the sharing of its experience with developing nations.