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Robert E. Rhoades, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia-Athens, is widely regarded as one of the founders of the field of agricultural anthropology. His career in both academic and applied anthropology has spanned more than 30 years during which he has written over 130 publications and received numerous honors for his efforts. While the first part of his career focused on international agriculture and development, over the past decade he has increasingly turned to the application of anthropology to local food and environmental issues in the United States.

He was born on a farm in southern Oklahoma in 1942. After two years of college at Oklahoma State University, he joined the United States Peace Corps in 1962 and was sent to Nepal, an experience which dramatically altered his outlook on life. Afterwards, he returned to Oklahoma State and completed his B.S. degree with a double specialization in agriculture and sociology. In 1966, he received an East West Center Fellowship at the University of Hawaii where he studied international development and sociology. As a part of the fellowship, he spent a year abroad at the University of Philippines-Los Banos and the International Rice Research Institute studying the diffusion of IR-8 or "miracle rice". In 1968, he turned to farming part-time as well as teaching at Phillips University, a liberal arts college in Enid, Oklahoma. As the viability of the family farm in this region of the US continued to decline, he decided to continue his education in anthropology at the University of Oklahoma where he received his Ph.D. in 1976.

After teaching two more years and conducting research on labor migrants in Europe and the US, he accepted a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship and was sent to Lima, Peru, to work with scientists at the International Potato Center. As one of the first social scientists to work in the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), he was able to help pioneer new perspectives in interdisciplinary, participatory approaches to agricultural and natural resource management. His "farmer-back-to-farmer model" (with Robert Booth) is considered a classic in development circles and was a forerunner to much of the present-day activity in participatory research and development. The model was based on team experience in generating small-scale storage systems which were adopted by thousands of farmers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1988, he transferred to Asia where he founded UPWARD (User's Perspective with Agricultural Research and Development), a pan-Asian network aimed at generating agricultural technology which is user-friendly and environmentally safe.

In 1991, he accepted the Headship of the Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia. Within two three-year appointments as Head, he was able to add eight new faculty lines, establish five new laboratories, increase the external funding ten fold, implement a new graduate and undergraduate program, and give the department its first high visibility in its fifty year history. During this same time, Dr. Rhoades brought in more than 2.5 million dollars in external funds through the various research programs he manages. In 1994, he was appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture to serve on the National Genetic Resources Council, a citizen body which advises the Secretary on plant genetic resources. In that same year, he gave the Seventh "Tex Frazier" Distinguished Lecture before the American Society for Horticulture Sciences Annual Meeting. In 1997, with Virginia Nazarea, he founded the Southern Seed Legacy, a network of southern gardeners and seed savers dedicated to preserving old varieties of vegetables, fruits, and crops. He has been appointed to numerous boards of international research organizations, more recently IBSRAM (International Board Soil Research and Management in Bangkok, Thailand) and TSBF (Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute in Nairobi, Kenya). In 2000, he was elected North American Board Member to the International Mountain Forum and was heavily involved in the UN International Year of the Mountain during 2002. Dr. Rhoades manages a large interdisiciplinary sustainable agriculture and natural resource management project (SANREM-Andes) in Ecuador funded through the CRSP (Collaborative Research Support Program) of USAID. During 2002 he won the coveted William A. Owens Creative Research Award at the University of Georgia and was appointed a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Ecuador. Dr. Rhoades has produced 6 PhDs while at the University of Georgia and presently is Chairperson for another 6 PhD candidates. Many of his graduate students work in his lab or on his projects in the field.

Robert Rhoades is keenly interested in making natural resource and agricultural issues understandable to the educated lay public. He writes regularly for National Geographic Magazine, an effort which has given him national acclaim. In 1991, he was awarded the National Science Writers Award for his National Geographic article on the world food supply and biodiversity.

Finally, he is the founding Executive Director of Agrarian Connections, a non-profit educational and research organization working toward the preservation of rural landscapes and lifeways. The organization is presently restoring a 312 acre degraded cotton farm in the Georgia Piedmont , including the historical farm structures representing four time periods from pre-European down to the present.