These keynote remarks review some of the origins of Title XII of the Foreign Assistance Act. This legislation, whose goal is to conquer famine and malnutrition worldwide, was signed into law by President Ford in 1975. Senator Hubert Humphrey's address at the 1977 Famine Prevention Symposium in Washington, DC, is recounted with emphasis on his challenge to the participating diplomats, university leaders, and AID officials to banish the age-old problem of famine and malnutrition worldwide through farmer and land-grant education programs in developing countries. Two books which inspired the legislative process that culminated in Title XII are also reviewed. The first, "We Don't Know How" (William Paddock), exposes the failures of AID projects in Mexico and Central America and argues that two major factors in these failures were a breakdown in communications among the project sponsors and the lack of institutional memory. The second, "Partners with India" (Hadley Read), suggests that U.S. land-grant models should be applied in countries that need to improve agricultural production. Attention is also drawn in these remarks to the preliminary results of a survey of the policies of 40 Title XII institutions for the storage and retrieval of development assistance information. It is noted that some U.S. institutions that have had long experience with development contracts have done little to retain and catalog the information resulting from these contracts, or to promote information retrieval by students, teachers, scientists, and other institutions. Librarians are urged to provide leadership in the storage and dissemination of research information on famine and malnutrition to support efforts to overcome these problems in needy countries. (MAB)