To Improve the Quality of Life of the People of the Earth Through Improved Practices in Agriculture and Nutrition.

The Benson Institute, a nonprofit 501 (C3) organization, was established in 1975 as a division of the College of Biology and Agriculture at Brigham Young University (BYU). While continuing its affiliation with BYU, in Jan. of 2008 it became a part of LDS Welfare Services and LDS Charities with headquarters at 50 E. North Temple Street in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.  The Benson Institute was founded on September 15, 1975, in honor of Ezra Taft Benson, a great public servant who served as United States Secretary of Agriculture during entire the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. Throughout his life, Ezra Taft Benson worked to help others help themselves.

Over the past three decades the Benson Institute has developed unique programs teaching village farm families and others in the Developing World how to become nutritionally self-sufficient and to greatly improve their economic circumstances.  Accordingly, the Benson Institute cooperates with universities, their students and professors and other agencies to discover and apply methodologies to maximize use of existing family resources of rural and urban poor in order to enhance nutrition and economic self-reliance.  The students use their findings in teaching community members how to increase production and improve their health. University students thereby enrich their educational experience while simultaneously bringing poor families to self-sufficiency.