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Summary of Overall Campaign The following report presents a summary of activities carried out by the Burness-led communications team for the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). The activities highlighted below include advance work (GAT release and promotion) and on-the-ground work (traditional media outreach, social media, blog, press briefings, daily summaries, site visits, biodiversity luncheon, and the closing press release). Highlights of Media Work for GCARD From Freetown to Nairobi, New Delhi, London, Sydney, and host city Montpellier, GCARD related media coverage reached far and wide on news pages, airwaves, and websites in every region of the world. In addition to stories from the approximately 30 journalists who attended GCARD, media outlets worldwide covered a wide range of topics from afar, underscoring the unique diversity of GCARD participants, their viewpoints, and their stories. For example, Nature reported on donor concerns around CGIAR reforms, while Reuters and UN IRIN highlighted the need for bottom-up approaches and a more inclusive AR4D agenda to meet the challenges of feeding more people in the face of climate change and other constraints. In the week leading up to the conference, the communications team widely promoted the global author report to international media, resulting in coverage by Reuters, BBC News, BBC Mundo, UN IRIN, and Voice of America, to name a few. The advance coverage set the stage for increased global awareness during the conference by both media and stakeholders alike. Media coverage during the conference was energized by multiple press briefings, 60+ arranged interviews for journalists on and off site, and via the blog, which provided near real-time updates of GCARD happenings for readers all over the world. A closing conference press release also helped foster reflective news stories post-GCARD. A combination of communications tools —including the daily summaries for participants, social media, and traditional media on site—helped to generate internal and external feedback loops, which continue to reverberate post-GCARD and foster impacts beyond stories, hits, page views, and the conference walls.

Selected Quotes from Key Articles “The Green Revolution has a new avatar: transformed Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D), and food experts hope it will provide the panacea for hunger.”

-UN IRIN, 25 March

“The conference showed that agricultural researchers are mobilized and recognize themselves as a global community,” [said Marion Guillou in an interview]. -Nature, 14 April

“’I think it's the first time we've had this kind of collective input," [Monty Jones] told a media briefing. Even proposed reforms for international agricultural research centres were "filtering down to national programmes for their effective participation. We go back very happy, very glad that the first GCARD has been a big success."

-SciDev.net, 1 April

Executive Summary of GCARD Communications and Media Outreach

Montpellier, France 28-31 March 2010

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Press Briefings Three media briefings were arranged during GCARD in the press room, including: Introductory High-Level Panel on Day 1 of GCARD, featuring:

Adel El-Beltagy, Outgoing Chair, Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) Carlos Pérez del Castillo, Chair, CGIAR Consortium Board Ismael Serageldin, Director, Library of Alexandria Kanayo F. Nwanze, President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Laurence Tubiana, Founder of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International

Relations (IDDRI) in Paris Margaret Catley-Carlson, Chair, Global Crop Diversity Trust and Global Water Partnership Monty Jones, Chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), Executive Director of the

Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development, Centre for Environmental Policy,

Imperial College

High-Level Briefing on Africa’s Green Revolution, featuring: Hartmann, Director General, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Monty Jones, Chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), Executive Director of the

Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) Namanga Ngongi, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA

Closing Conference Press Briefing, featuring:

Carlos Perez del Castillo, Chair, CGIAR Consortium Board Monty Jones, Executive Director, Chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), Forum

for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) Pierre Fabre, Commission for Recherche Agricole Internationale

Mediterranean Biodiversity Lunch Discussion, featuring:

Bernard Chevassus-au-Louis, Inspector General of Agriculture, France Cary Fowler, Executive Director, Global Crop Diversity Trust Emile Frison, Director General, Bioversity International

In addition, area site visits were arranged for journalists, and two informal multi-journalist briefings took place with Kanayo Nwanze and Sir Gordon Conway. Daily Summaries The communications team on site wrote, edited, printed, and distributed daily summaries to participants at GCARD (with the exception of the final day, in which a closing day press release served as a substitute). These summaries contained highlights of each session, including notable quotes and links to additional information on the blog. Social Media Since the beginning of the GCARD process, the communications staff (Burness and Simone Staiger of CIAT) posted 120 blog entries, resulting in 78 comments by blog readers and 22,239 total views as of April 1. March 30—the busiest day—received 1,128 views alone.

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During the conference week, the blog received 3,486 visits for the 50 blog posts that were published. The most popular posts included the background reading, the program, the FAQ, and the press advisory.

Flickr Under the guidance of the communications team, two professional photographers captured over 780 pictures for the GCARD2010 Flickr site. During the conference, the Flickr site was viewed 7,677 times. Photos with the highest number of views included those of the Mediterranean exhibition and the CGIAR award ceremony. Twitter Since the beginning of the GCARD process, @GCARD tweeted 639 times, including 150 unique tweets during GCARD, which captured insightful quotes from speakers from in real-time. As of April 1, the twitter account had 205 followers. 60 tweets were retweeted. Among the re-tweeters are: @agrobiodiverse @farmingfirst @gcard2010 @ruralinnovation, @faonews, @unicef, and several CGIAR centers. Interviews arranged for LOC, GAT, GFAR, Stakeholders and CGIAR Spokespeople Interviews were arranged for the following spokespeople during and leading up to GCARD: Dr. Abdou Tenkouano (AVRDC) Channel Africa, Wandile Kallipa Der Spiegel (Germany), Petra Bornhoeft Jeune Afrique, Antoine Labey Radio France Internationale (C’est Pas du Vent), Anne-Cècile Bras Reuters AlertNet, Laurie Goering Voice of America—French Service, Camille Grosdider Dr. Ajay Vashee (IFAD) Le Monde (France), Bertrand D’Armagnac

Amin Ahmed Mohammed Othman Abaza (Agriculture Minister, Egypt) Bloomberg, Rudy Ruitenberg Le Monde (France), Bertrand D’Armagnac Dr. Andy Jarvis (CIAT) Le Monde (France), Bertrand D’Armagnac El Universal (Mexico), Guillermo Cardenas Dr. Balasubramanian Ramani (YPARD) Deutsche Welle Radio (Germany), Helle Jeppesen

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Dr. Benedict Haerlin (Foundation on Future Farming) Deutsche Welle Radio (Germany), Helle Jeppesen Dr. Carlos Seré (ILRI) Nature (UK), Natasha Gilbert Dr. Colin Chartes (IWMI) Nature (UK), Natasha Gilbert SciDev.net, Sian Lewis Dr. David Molden (IWMI) Africa Science News Service, Muigai Naftali Bangkok Post (Thailand), Piyaporn Wongruang Bloomberg, Rudy Ruitenberg SciDev.net, Sian Lewis Dr. Dennis Garrity (ICRAF) Deutsche Welle Radio (Germany), Helle Jeppesen Dr. Dyno Keatinge (AVRDC) Africa Report, Gemma Ware BBC Network Africa (UK), Victor Silver Der Spiegel (Germany), Hilmar Schmundt Dr. Emile Frison (Bioversity) Radio France Internationale (C’est Pas du Vent), Anne-Cècile Bras Voice of America, Joe de Capua Dr. Eduardo Trigo (Global Author) SciDev.net, Naomi Antony Voice of America, Joe de Capua Dr. Fan Shenggen (IFPRI) Bangkok Post, Piyaporn Wongruang Dr. Farid Waliyar (CGIAR) Channel Africa (South Africa), Wandile Kallipa Sir Gordon Conway (Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London) Africa Report, Gemma Ware BBC, Richard Black Daily Telegraph (UK), Louise Gray Hartmann (IITA) Africa Report, Gemma Ware Deutsche Welle Radio (Germany), Helle Jeppesen

Radio France Internationale—English, Michel Arseneault SciDev.net, Naomi Antony Dr. Howard Minigh (Farming First) Reuters AlertNet, Laurie Goering Dr. Huajun Tang (CAAS) Africa Report, Gemma Ware Dr. Jacques Diouf (FAO) Le Monde (France), Bertrand D’Armagnac Nouvel Observateur (France), Guillaume Malaurie Dr. Joachim von Braun (IFPRI) Bloomberg, Rudy Ruitenberg Le Monde (France), Bertrand D’Armagnac Jonathan Wadsworth (DFID) Nature (UK), Natasha Gilbert Dr. Jules Pretty (Global Author) Globe and Mail, Susan Sachs Radio France Internationale—English, Mark Rodden Reuters, Alister Doyle SciDev.net, Yojana Sharma Dr. Kanayo Nwanze (IFAD) Der Spiegel (Germany), Petra Bornhoeft Mark Holderness (FAO) Channel Africa (South Africa), Wandile Kallipa Inter Press Service, Paul Virgo SciDev.net, Yojana Sharma Mary Njenga (Researcher) Africa Report, Gemma Ware Dr. Monty Jones (GFAR) Africa Report, Gemma Ware Dr. Ngongi Namanga (AGRA) Africa Report, Gemma Ware Jeune Afrique, Antoine Labey Nicolas Bricas (CIRAD) Radio France Internationale (Securité Alimentaire), Frederic Garat

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Dr. Nina Federoff (Former US Advisor) Nature (UK), Natasha Gilbert Dr. Papa Abdoulaye Seck (WARDA) Radio France Internationale (C’est Pas du Vent), Anne-Cècile Bras Patricia Biermayr (CGIAR PRGA) Deutsche Welle Radio (Germany), Helle Jeppesen Mr. Phil-Philo Abessolo Ndong (CNOP Gabon/PROPAC) Liberation (France) Carole Rap

Dr. Pierre Fabre (CRAI) Agence France Presse, Herve Gavard La Tribune (France), Benamou Reuters AlertNet, Laurie Goering Dr. Prabhu Pingali (Gates Foundation) Nature (UK), Natasha Gilbert Dr. Rodomiro Ortiz (CIMMYT) El Universal (Mexico), Guillermo Cardenas Ruth Meinzen-Dick (IFPRI) Globe and Mail (Canada), Susan Sachs

Stephen Muchiri (EAFF) SciDev.net, Yojana Sharma Sujiro Seam (French Foreign Ministry) Le Monde (France), Bertrand D’Armagnac Dr. Uma Lele (Global Author) ABC Radio (Australia), National Breakfast, BBC, Richard Black

Reuters, Laurie Goering SciDev.net, Naomi Antony Science, Erik Stokstad Swedish Radio, Gustaf Klarin UN IRIN, Jaspreet Kindra Voice of America, Joe de Capua Vicki Wilde (CGIAR) Globe and Mail (Canada), Susan Sachs

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Below is a full list of coverage that we have tracked to date and full text of the articles where available. Index of Media Coverage Wires Africa Science News Service (3) (clips not available) Agence France Presse (2) Bloomberg (3) Express News Service (India) Inter Press Service (2) PANA Press (2) Pressetext (Austria) Reuters (UK) Reuters AlertNet (UK) (4) UN IRIN (2) United News of India Broadcast 7LTV MONTPELLIER (France) ABC Radio (Australia) BBC World Service—Network Africa Radio France Internationale (2) Voice of America (3) Print Bangkok Post (Thailand) Business Daily (Kenya) Dallas Morning News Globe and Mail (Canada) (2) Guardian (Nigeria) L’Herault du Jour (France) L'Independent (France) (2) Libération (France) (3) Midi Libre (France) (4) Original Online Actualites News Environnement (France) Africa Report BBC News (UK) BBC Mundo (UK) Climate-L.org Commodity Online (India) Les Dépeches de Brazzaville (Congo) GaboNews.ga "Global Food For Thought" Blog (Chicago Council on Global Affairs) (2) Les Info Vertes Innovation Le Journal (France) Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report Mediaterre.org MidiLibre.com (2)

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Nature News (UK) (2) Nature Middle East (UK) Nouvel Observateur (France) Pioneer (India) RosarioNet (Argentina) SciDev.net (UK) (4) SciDev.net Weblog (UK) (15+ articles) Scientias (Netherlands) Smart Planet TendersInfo El Universal (Mexico) Dr. Monty Jones op-ed coverage Print: Business Daily (Kenya) Daily Monitor (Uganda) Daily Nation (Kenya) New People Newspaper (Sierra Leone) Sierra Express Media (Sierra Leone) Online pick-up: Agriculture Industry Today (EI News) AllAfrica.com Bahcesel Habersel DayLife.com EcoEarth.info (related news) EnvironmentalExpert.com Farming First.org Food Security and Ag-Biotech News (Headlines) Forests.org India Times Melma! Science Communications News Meridian Institute NBC Affiliates in Georgia and Tennessee - 11Alive.com, WBIR.com Planeta Recursos Educativos Abiertos Dr. Adel El Beltagy and Dr. Mahmoud Solh op-ed coverage Nature Middle East—English Nature Middle East—Arabic Global Arab Network Bahcesel habersel

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Montpellier: les agriculteurs, partenaires incontournables de la recherche MONTPELLIER - La première conférence mondiale de la recherche agronomique pour le développement (Gcard), réunie à Montpellier, a tracé le chemin d'un dialogue entre tous les acteurs de la filière agricole pour s'attaquer à la faim et la pauvreté et mis en lumière le rôle-clé des agriculteurs. "Le temps est passé où nous pouvions fonctionner totalement isolés", a déclaré le docteur Monty Jones, directeur exécutif du Forum mondial de l'agriculture, à l'issue de la conférence qui s'est achevée mercredi. "Le temps est passé, a-t-il insisté, où nous décidions pour les agriculteurs". "Ce sont les gens pour lesquels nous travaillons. C'est à eux de nous dire leurs besoins". Pendant quatre jours, près de 1.000 scientifiques, chercheurs, agriculteurs, représentants d'organisations internationales ou d'associations se sont retrouvés dans la capitale languedocienne. Selon la Banque mondiale, 1,4 milliard de personnes dans le monde vivent dans une extrême pauvreté. La population mondiale va passer de 6 à 9 milliards à l'horizon 2050. Des "émeutes de la faim" avaient touché une trentaine de pays en 2007-2008. Pour garantir la recherche et le développement d'une agriculture respectueuse de l'environnement, un engagement de tous les partenaires est indispensable et à Montpellier, "la participation des agriculteurs a été réaffirmée", s'est félicité Pierre Fabre, le secrétaire exécutif de la Commission de la recherche agricole internationale (CRAI). Porte-parole de la Gcard, M. Fabre milite pour l'interaction entre le savoir des scientifiques, leurs idées, leur compréhension physique et biologique des choses, et celui des populations "qui ont des connaissances anciennes sur le fonctionnement de leur écosystème". "Dans l'orientation que l'on peut donner aux recherches, les agriculteurs sont les mieux à même d'exprimer les véritables contraintes qu'ils rencontrent, où sont leurs difficultés à appliquer des innovations qui paraissent être tout à fait judicieuses aux chercheurs mais qui parfois se heurtent à la réalité de ce que sont les exploitations agricoles", a-t-il assuré. (©AFP / 01 avril 2010 15h29) http://www.romandie.com/infos/news2/100401132927.2e91k6px.asp

WIRES

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A Montpellier, scientifiques et agriculteurs pensent sécurité alimentaire et environnement MONTPELLIER, 27 mars 2010 (AFP) - Des scientifiques, agriculteurs et responsables politiques du monde entier, se réunissent à partir de dimanche à Montpellier pour réfléchir à la manière de travailler ensemble afin d'assurer la sécurité alimentaire de la planète tout en développant une agriculture respectueuse de l'environnement. Cette Conférence mondiale de la recherche agronomique pour le développement (Gcard), dont l'idée est née après les premières émeutes de la faim il y a deux ans, est vouée à devenir un rendez-vous biennal, a indiqué à l'AFP le secrétaire exécutif de la Commission de la recherche agricole internationale (CRAI) et porte-parole de la Gcard, Pierre Fabre. Se déroulant sur quatre jours, elle est organisée par le Forum mondial de la recherche agricole (Gfar). "Les problématiques deviennent mondiales donc il faut des programmes de recherche mondiaux et ancrés dans la réalité, avec la participation des instituts de recherche du Nord comme du Sud en pointe sur la réalité de leurs régions", explique M. Fabre. "L'objectif premier est la sécurité alimentaire quantitativement et qualitativement", et plus particulièrement dans les pays les plus pauvres, poursuit-il, rappelant qu'aujourd'hui "on n'a pas de problème de production mais de répartition". "Mais à plus long terme, avec 9 milliards d'habitants, il faut penser à augmenter la productivité", dit M. Fabre. Avec pour défi la nécessité d'adopter des "techniques agricoles respectueuses de l'environnement" comme celles qui "font appel aux mécanismes de la nature". La conférence s'est fixée un troisième objectif, celui de trouver un modèle économique viable pour réduire la pauvreté afin de mettre un frein à l'exode rural et au surpeuplement des villes. "Il faut que les gens puissent gagner leur vie avec l'agriculture", explique Pierre Fabre. Près d'un millier de participants, venus d'une centaine de pays, sont attendus à Montpellier: des représentants des organisations et coopératives paysannes, des décideurs politiques, des dirigeants d'organisations internationales, des représentants des 15 centres internationaux de recherche agricole et le président de l'Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (FAO) Jacques Diouf.

http://www.romandie.com/infos/news2/100327091143.rffsgamm.asp

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Global Food Reserve Needed to Stabilize Prices, Researchers Say By Rudy Ruitenberg March 29 (Bloomberg) -- A global crop reserve system is needed to reduce price volatility, curb speculation and prevent a food crisis, said researchers from Germany and France. Centralized global stocks could bring “peace and quiet” to world food markets, said Joachim von Braun, director of Germany’s Center for Development Research, at a conference on agriculture research in Montpellier, France, yesterday. World food prices started rising in 2007 and climbed to a record in June 2008. Surging prices of wheat, rice and corn sparked riots from Haiti to Ivory Coast. Von Braun said IFPRI research has shown fund investment in agricultural commodity futures added to price volatility. “The world is no more food secure today than three years ago, when the world food-price crisis hit,” said von Braun, a University of Bonn professor and former head of the Washington- based International Food Policy Research Institute. We need “an efficient, global, coordinated reserve policy which brings peace and quiet to the world food market,” von Braun said. A global reserve would make it “difficult to manipulate the market,” said Marion Guillou, the head of France’s Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, at the conference. Von Braun said a food-stabilization system should consist of three parts, including a physical stock managed by the World Food Programme that would allow the agency to respond to a humanitarian crisis more speedily, as well as a reserve based on countries setting aside some of their stocks. “In a price spike situation, this group could decide, like the International Energy Agency, to release from stock,” von Braun said. “Not a general stabilization fund, but a price- spike stabilization mechanism.” The third instrument would be a virtual financial fund that could counter speculators by taking positions in the agricultural futures market, he said. “We have good analysis that speculation played in role in 2007 and 2008,” von Braun said. “Speculation did matter and it did amplify, that debate can be put to rest. These spikes are not a nuisance, they kill. They’ve killed thousands of people.” To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at rruitenberg@bloomberg.net http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=au9X.0u6VpF0#

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Researcher sees corn, wheat prices doubling by 2050 By Rudy Ruitenberg Bloomberg News Published: Thursday, April 1, 2010 12:18 PM CDT PARIS — Corn, wheat and rice prices may more than double by 2050 as rising demand for food exceeds yield gains, said Marianne Baenziger, a researcher at the world's leading wheat and corn breeding center. Based on trend yield improvement, "price increases will be more than two-fold" by 2050, said Baenziger, deputy director- general for research and partnership at the El Batan, Mexico- based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. "Rice will remain the most expensive crop." Food production will have to expand by 70 percent in the next four decades as the global population expands to 9.1 billion and rising incomes boost meat consumption, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. Demand for corn is the fastest-growing among the three main cereals and will double by 2050 in developing countries, said Baenziger, who spoke at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development in Montpellier, France, Tuesday. Corn, wheat and rice account for 49 percent of all calories consumed in developing countries, making them "food-security crops," according to Baenziger, who cited FAO data. "If we want food prices for these three crops to remain stable, yields will have to go up," Baenziger said. "We had a food crisis in 2008 and there is an urgency to act." Corn yields would have to grow by 2.4 percent a year from 1.6 percent now for prices to remain unchanged, according to the researcher. Annual yield gains for rice would have to rise to 1.5 percent from 0.9 percent and wheat productivity needs to rise to 2.3 percent a year from 1.3 percent, she said. "At this stage the actual yield in developing countries is in many places far from the potential," Baenziger said. More than 80 percent of the food-production increase will have to come from existing farm land, Baenziger said. Lifting grain production will be hampered by climate change, soil degradation, as well as fertilizer and water shortages, the researcher said. Wheat yields will be most affected by a changing climate, she added. Using current climate-change models, wheat output in the region of northern India and Pakistan is estimated to decline by between 17 percent and 38 percent by 2020 because of heat stress to the crop, Baenziger said. The annual loss of wheat production in the region would amount to $7.7 billion by 2025, she said.

http://www.winfieldcourier.com/articles/2010/04/01/news/agriculture/doc4bb4a331c45bd874746664.txt

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Water shortages put world's food supply at risk 07:38 AM CDT on Friday, April 2, 2010 PARIS – Water shortages and inefficient irrigation threaten the world's ability to feed a growing population, said David Molden, deputy director-general for research at the International Water Management Institute. The grain-growing regions of northern China, India and Australia's Murray Darling Basin, as well as farming areas in the western United States, Mexico and Pakistan, face "really tight" water situations, Molden said. Agriculture and irrigation methods must change for the world to produce enough food, the researcher said. More precise water delivery can make irrigation more efficient while water rationing and pricing may provide incentives to farmers to reduce consumption, he added. "Our food security is based on unsustainable water practices," Molden said in an interview in Montpellier, France. "I don't think people have quite realized that. The next 10 years are going to be tough as we deal with water shortages." Food production will have to expand by 70 percent in the next four decades as the global population expands to 9.1 billion and rising incomes boost meat consumption, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water withdrawals from rivers worldwide, and reduced river flows are hurting water quality and damaging wetlands, Molden said. Bloomberg News

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-water_02int.ART.State.Edition1.4cfbd95.html

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DEVELOPMENT: More Food, Except For That Billion Or So By Paul Virgo ROME, Mar 31, 2010 (IPS) - While agricultural research has made massive strides over the years in helping the world produce more food from the same amount of land, around one in six people, the 1.02 billion hungry, have not noticed. The populations of wealthier countries have abundant cheap food thanks to researchers' efforts and, no doubt, many more people in the developing world would be undernourished if states such as India, Mexico and the Philippines had not imported modern farming practices and technologies. These advances have not done enough, though, to help the rural poor, who account for three-quarters of the world's hungry, to feed themselves or escape from poverty. "Poor people don't have a voice and rural people don't have a voice, urban tends to dominate and yet all of our food comes from rural areas," said Noel Magor of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), one of the participants at this week's Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) in Montpellier, France. "Often it is considered that technology will magically make its way through to poor households and that doesn't happen. Poorer households actually get ignored by the system and so they fall by the wayside." Research failings are only part of the reason why so many people have empty stomachs in a world of adequate aggregate food supplies, along with a series of social, gender, justice, dissemination and economic issues and long- running underinvestment in agriculture as a whole. Nevertheless, a part of the problem they are and the obvious solution, is to turn agricultural research 'bottom-up', based on the real needs of smallholder farmers, rather than trying to make solutions developed for other demands work for them. This is necessary for more than the two billion people whose livelihoods depend on the world's 500 million smallholder farms, according to the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) forecasts that world food production must increase 70 percent by 2050 to nourish a human population likely to reach 9.1 billion. But many experts believe expansion of large-scale farming, which relies heavily on chemicals and irrigation and often entails deforestation for livestock rearing, cannot achieve this target sustainably, given the high toll it has on soil fertility and the environment in general, and the increasing pressure climate change is putting on water resources. So there is growing consensus, even among organisations such as the G8 and the World Bank, that it is necessary to help the developing world's smallholder farmers become more productive so they can grow themselves out of poverty, feed their families and contribute to meeting soaring food demand at the same time. "The developing world's agricultural research systems are currently insufficiently developmental-oriented," says an expert paper laying the foundations for a roadmap that will be approved at GCARD on how agricultural research should be transformed.

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"Research organisations have generally not been good at integrating the needs and priorities of the poor in the work of researchers," the paper says. "Agricultural research and development efforts that engage farmers and build from the bottom up can release locked-up innovation, become responsive and effective, encourage many different pathways, and result in adequate food for all." Smallholders need research to provide them with innovations - new farming and livestock breeding techniques and seeds - that are not only effective in increasing yields in a scenario made more difficult by climate change, but are also affordable, and appropriate to their skills and equipment. Smallholders are often remarkably quick at changing their practices to adapt them to changing situations on the ground, such as rainfall patterns, and so feedback from them can be excellent input to shape scientific studies. "Agricultural research plans need to allow for a genuine two-way flow of knowledge and information, between the scientists and the rural communities, including indigenous peoples, to ensure that our response to the needs and conditions in rural areas is truly comprehensive," IFAD President Kanayo Nwanze said at the conference. Good agricultural research should also be increasingly interdisciplinary. Rural insurance and credit innovations are needed, for example, to encourage poor farmers, who are frequently reluctant to take loans for fear of not being able to repay in the event of bad weather or crop price changes, to invest in new resources. Greater use should also be made of mobile telephones which, among other things, can deliver smallholders with up-to-date information on weather, crops, pest control and markets for them to make better-informed decisions. "We're looking at how to make knowledge more relevant to the needs of the poor," FAO's Mark Holderness, who is also executive secretary of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, told IPS. "There's no silver bullet here. We are looking for a much greater integration of disciplines, much greater collective action that does not just deal with the (agricultural) input, but also deals with all the pieces needed to get that knowledge to farmers, to get farmers' produce through to market, to create a more viable livelihood for farmers." This is where the public sector is being asked to take the lead. "The private sector will invest in agriculture but only where it sees a profit, which is logical, but it means that it has a strong bias to the richest farmers and will not do much about poverty alleviation," Emile Frison, Director General of the Rome-based Bioversity International research institute devoted to agricultural biodiversity, told IPS. (END)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50859

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Farmers on Fringe of Intl Agriculture Policy? By Stephen Leahy MONTPELLIER, France, Apr 14, 2010 (IPS) - How's this for short-sighted: A billion people go hungry every day, food prices have climbed 30 to 40 percent, climate change is reducing agricultural production - and for the past two decades, the world has slashed investments in publicly-funded agriculture until it is a pittance in most countries. "Moral outrage is needed. We must abolish this... It can be done. It must be done," Ismail Serageldin, director of the Library of Alexandria, Egypt and a former World Bank economist, told nearly 700 World Food Prize laureates, ministers, scientists and a few representatives from development and farmer organisations at the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) last month here in southern France. "This is the launching pad to transform hunger in our time," Serageldin concluded. The "rocket" on the launching pad is a major transformation of the 500 million dollars of public funds for international agricultural research carried out by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an alliance comprising some 8,000 researchers in 100 countries. For the past year, a global consultation process involving over 2,000 stakeholders from 200 countries has produced a draft plan for reform that promises to meet the needs of the world's 500 million poor small farmers who feed the two billion poorest people. Called ambitious and far-reaching by proponents, the "Montpellier Road Map" sets the priorities for "linking science and innovation to the needs of farmers and the rural poor". Critics say it resembles little more than a passionate shuffling of the status quo. As the French say like to say: "Plus ça change; plus c'est la même chose" (the more things change, the more they stay the same). "Researchers want to solve their problems, not the small farmers' problems," said Edward Kateiya, representing the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers. "They are not addressing our needs here. Farmer empowerment is the key and what we really need," Kateiya told IPS. Small farmers and their organisations were noticeably absent. La Via Campesina, likely the world's largest small-farmer coalition representing more 148 organisations in 69 countries, had no official role in the conference. Although the organisation has a strong presence in France, only one or two members were able to attend due to admission restrictions. "When I asked if GCARD could do research on how to prevent small-scale farmers from being expelled from their lands by land-grabbing investors, they said it was not their concern," Jacques Debarros, of the Confédération Paysanne, France told IPS through a translator. "But when the representative of the U.S. government said GMO (genetically modified) crops could reduce hunger around the world if there were less restrictive regulations in other countries, it was very much their concern," Debarros said.

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"Should we understand that the agricultural model promoted by GCARD is a model that works without any farmers?" he asked. The opening session of the GCARD in the Montpellier Opera Hall featured some of the most senior agricultural experts, almost entirely male, over 50 years old and who have headed important agriculture institutes the last decade or two and continue to do so. "In the 1970s, Africa had no need to import food," reminded Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialised U.N. agency that is dedicated to financing agricultural development projects. Ten years ago, one in seven went hungry - now it is one in six, Nwanze, the former head of the Africa Rice Centre, told participants. Climate change, population growth, water shortages and volatile food prices means the challenge of feeding the world has never been greater, but is "not insurmountable". Real reform should include a generational change in leadership, many here say, because hunger has become more widespread and food prices higher on the "old guard's watch". And that's despite an international focus on the Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger by 2015. "They asked people inside these organisations to make reforms. They couldn't bring themselves to close research centres or gut their own territories. They can't imagine anything new," said Hans Herren, president of the Millennium Institute in Virginia. Herren, a research scientist long involved in CGIAR, was the World Food Prize winner in 1995, and is credited with implementing a biological control programme that saved the African cassava crop, averting a food crisis. "We already produce more food than we need but there still a billion hungry. That reality is not being addressed here," Herren said in an interview. Global agriculture needs a paradigm shift to a multifunctional agro- ecosystem approach as detailed in the 2008 International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), he said. Herren was co-chair of the three-year assessment that not only examined agricultural science and technology, but also the reality of its impacts on the environment and society. It concluded that industrial, large-scale agriculture is unsustainable and the best hope for the future are agro-ecosystems that marry food production with ensuring water supplies remain clean, preserving biodiversity, and improving the livelihoods of the poor. "There is no mention of the assessment here. The CGIAR has yet to come to terms with it," Herren said. The emphasis at GCARD was on boosting agricultural productivity through increased yields using public-private partnerships and employing genetically engineered crops, he said. "It's frustrating, this belief that biotechnology will solve all the problems." Trade and subsidies are the biggest reason why people are hungry, but even though that is widely known, little is being done about it. "Agricultural subsidies amount to one billion dollars a day in OECD countries," said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) since 1994. "We need fair trade. Unless we solve this problem we will continue to have more hungry people," he said.

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AfricaRice remporte deux prix internationaux Agriculture - Le Centre du riz pour l'Afrique (AfricaRice) basé au Bénin a remporté deux prix scientifiques prestigieux, l'un pour la communication et l'autre pour jeune chercheur, indique un communiqué transmis mardi par l'organisation à la PANA à Lagos. "Ces prix ont été décernés par le Groupe consultatif pour la recherche agricole internationale (CGIAR) à la Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement, qui se tient à Montpellier, en France", a précisé le communiqué. Le prix 2009 de la communication exceptionnelle du CGIAR a été présenté au Dr Paul Van Mele, chef du programme Apprentissage et Systèmes d'innovation d'AfricaRice, pour l'initiative d'apprentissage sur le riz par les vidéos relatives aux pratiques améliorées de production du riz. Ces vidéos, combinées aux médias, ont contribué à renforcer les capacités de plus de 600 organisations paysannes dans toute l'Afrique, à stimuler une plus grande innovation que les techniques conventionnelles de formation des paysans et ont eu un impact tangible sur les moyens d'existence des femmes rurales. AfricaRice est l'un des 15 centres internationaux appuyés par le CGIAR. C'est également une association de recherche intergouvernementale autonome composée de 24 pays africains. Le directeur général de l'organisation, Dr Papa Abdoulaye Seck, a affirmé que les deux prix démontrent l'engagement du centre au développement alimentaire à travers le continent. Le prix du jeune scientifique a été présenté à Dr Jonne Rodenburg, malherbologiste d'AfricaRice, pour son engagement à aider les riziculteurs pauvres d'Afrique, notamment les femmes, à travers le développement d'approches intégrées de gestion d'adventices parasites, la principale source de perte de rendement en riziculture en Afrique. Dr Rodenburg a été particulièrement récompensé pour sa recherche de haute qualité, sa liste de publications exceptionnelle, son implication étroite dans le renforcement des capacités des chercheurs nationaux et ses efforts couronnés de succès dans la mobilisation des ressources pour les projets de recherche. "Nous sommes fiers de nos deux lauréats dont les réalisations attestent du nouveau dynamisme de la recherche au sein d'AfricaRice", a déclaré M. Seck. http://www.afriquejet.com/actualites/agriculture/africarice-remporte-deux-prix-internationaux-2010033146884.html

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AfricaRice centre wins international awards The Benin Republic-based Africa Rice Centre (AfricaRice) has won two prestigious international science awards, including one for Outstanding Communication and the other for Outstanding Promising Young Scientist, according to a statement made available to PANA here Tuesday by the Organisation. ''These awards were conferred by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development, which is taking place in Montpellier, France,'' the statement s aid. The 2009 CGIAR Outstanding Communication Award was presented to Dr Paul Van Mele, AfricaRice Programme Leader on Learning and Innovation Systems, for the Rice Rural Learning Initiative based on farmer-to-farmer videos on impro ved rice production practices. The videos, combined with mass media, have helped strengthen the capacities of over 600 farmer organizations across Africa, stimulated greater innovation than did conventional farmer training techniques and had tangible impact on the livelihood of rural women. AfricaRice is one of the 15 international centres supported by CGIAR. It is also an autonomous intergovernmental research association of 24 African member countries. The Director General of the organization, Dr. Papa Abdoulaye Seck, said the two awards demonstrated the centre's commitment to food development across the continent. 'We are very proud of our two awardees, whose achievements testify to the new dynamism in research at AfricaRice,' Seck said. The Young Scientist Award was presented to Dr Jonne Rodenburg, AfricaRice Weed Scientist, for his commitment to helping resource-poor rice farmers in Africa, especially women, through the development of integrated approaches to ma naging parasitic weeds, the major source of yield loss in rice in Africa. Dr Rodenburg was particularly appreciated for his high-quality research, excellent record in publications, close involvement in building capacity of national scientists and successful efforts in mobilizing resources for research projects. Lagos - Pana 31/03/2010

http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/africarice-centre-wins-international-awards-2010033146874.html

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Entwicklungsländern droht neue Hungerkrise Experten fordern rasche Maßnahmen für Fortschritte der Agrarindustrie Montpellier (pte/27.03.2010/13:30) - Den weltweit ärmsten Ländern droht eine neue Hungerkrise. Diese könnte noch bedeutend schwerere Folgen haben als die Nahrungsmittelengpässe, die 2008 zu Unruhen und internationalen Debatten über die Lebensmittelverteilung führten (pressetext berichtete: http://pressetext.com/news/080417004/). Im Vorfeld der ersten "Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development" (GCARD) fordern Experten daher rasche Maßnahmen, um die Agrarwirtschaft in Entwicklungsländern zu fördern und die Ernährung der Bevölkerung sicherstellen zu können. "Gerade in der Wirtschaftskrise haben viele Industriestaaten in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit einen Sparkurs eingeschlagen. Dabei gingen die bereitgestellten Mittel zur Bevölkerungsentwicklung schon vorher zurück", sagt eine Expertin für Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Gespräch mit pressetext. Das rasante Bevölkerungswachstum ist eine der Hauptursachen für schlechte wirtschaftliche Verhältnisse, Hunger und Armut (pressetext berichtete: http://pressetext.com/news/090812032/). Kein Rezept Die Weltbevölkerung wird Schätzungen zufolge bis 2050 die Marke von neun Mrd. Menschen überschreiten. Schon heute liege die Zahl der Hungernden über einer Mrd. Mit der schnellen Bevölkerungszunahme wachse auch der Bedarf an Nahrungsmitteln, weshalb die globale Lebensmittelproduktion innerhalb der kommenden 40 Jahre verdoppelt werden müsse. Der einzige Weg, um die Versorgung in ärmeren Ländern sicher zu stellen, sei, eine effiziente Form der Agrarwirtschaft in den betroffenen Regionen selbst zu entwickeln. Bisher konnten viele Entwicklungsländer das Nahrungsangebot für den Eigenbedarf nicht aufbringen. Afrika ist von der drohenden Nahrungsmittelkrise besonders stark betroffen. Viele Gebiete seien für die Etablierung einer Agrarwirtschaft angesichts von Wassermangel und hohen Temperaturen zu unwirtlich. Aufgrund des explosionsartigen Bevölkerungswachstums in den nächsten vier Jahrzehnten werde der für Landwirtschaft nutzbare Raum zusätzlich eingeengt. Angesichts der Unterschiede in den Entwicklungsländern existiere keine einzelne einfache Methode, um die Erträge nachhaltig zu steigern. Umso mehr bedürfe es verschiedener Lösungsansätze und stärkerer Maßnahmen als bisher. GCARD-Report (PDF-Download): http://gcardblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/gat-report-for-gcard-2010-version-11-0.pdf (Ende) http://pte.at/news/100327008/entwicklungslaendern-droht-neue-hungerkrise/

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(UK) Farming reform needed to end hunger without obesity 25 Mar 2010 09:32:17 GMT Source: Reuters * Farm research needs overhaul to cope with climate change * Want to end hunger for 1 billion without stoking obesity * Population move to cities changes food security approach By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO, March 25 (Reuters) - Agriculture needs revolutionary change to confront threats such as global warming and end hunger in developing nations without adding to the ranks of the obese, an international study showed on Thursday. The report said South Asia and Africa were "battlegrounds for poverty reduction" as the world population rose to a peak in 2050. Prospects for quick advances in curbing hunger are better for India and Bangladesh than sub-Saharan Africa, it said. Funded by groups including the World Bank and the European Commission, the report said agricultural research needed reforms "as radical as those that occurred during industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries". Research needs to be increased, and a fragmented "seed-to-table" food production system needs to be overhauled to improve cooperation between small-scale farmers, governments, companies, scientists, civil society groups and others. The report noted estimates that net investments of $83 billion a year, at 2009 prices, were needed in developing countries to meet U.N. projections of 2050 food demand. "That is an increase of almost 50 percent over current levels," it said. The world population is projected to rise to 9 billion by 2050 from 6.8 billion now. Between 1.0 and 1.5 billion people now live in poverty. ENVIRONMENT "There have been great advances in agricultural development in the past 50 years with remarkable increases in productivity," said Jules Pretty, professor of Environment & Society at Essex University in England who was among the authors. "But there are still a billion people hungry and a lot of the progress has been made at the expense of the environment," he told Reuters of the study, to be presented at a March 28-31 meeting of 1,000 farm experts in Montpellier, France. "Just around the corner are a number of serious threats which may already be playing out -- climate change, an energy crunch, economic uncertainty in the current model and rapidly changing consumption patterns," he said.

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One risk is that poor nations may imitate the tastes of rich countries, where rates of obesity are rising. In developing nations including Peru, Ghana and Tunisia "there are now more overweight people than hungry people," Pretty said. "Diets in developing countries will shift from low- to high-value cereals, poultry, meat, fruit and vegetables," the report said. That "is also likely to be accompanied by hunger and poverty in the countries with the poorest populations, while obesity rates as high as those now seen in wealthy countries will occur in others," it said. Other changes include the shift to a bigger urban population. "Addressing food security issues in urban areas is completely different than doing so in rural areas," wrote Eduardo Trigo, one of the authors. "The focus will have to shift to producing food by the poor for the poor." Pretty said the report's recommendation of broader cooperation, from farmers to governments, could unlock innovation. "That doesn't mean that everybody has to work with everybody all the time, which leads to paralysis," he said. Among farming success stories, Malawi has become a major producer of maize since the government decided to subsidise farmers' fertiliser supplies, he said. For Reuters latest environment blogs, click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Tim Pearce) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE62N1XI.htm

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(UK)

Q&A: 'Little revolutions' needed to feed 9 billion people - farming expert 25 Mar 2010 00:52:00 GMT Written by: Laurie Goering LONDON (AlertNet) - Finding ways to feed a global population that is expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050 will require "lots of little revolutions rather than one big bang," says Uma Lele, an Indian-born agricultural economist. Lele, lead author of a report released on Thursday called "Transforming Agricultural Research for Development," says the keys to boosting production lie not in new hybrid seeds or other "silver bullet" technologies but in a myriad of small advances, from mobile phone technology that gives small farmers information about where to find the best price for their produce on any given day to cutting paperwork associated with obtaining grants. Many new ideas, particularly those about adaptation to climate change - a growing agricultural challenge - will need to be local and spring from grassroots knowledge, rather than international bodies, she said. Coordinating research and working to disseminate the ideas that work will be crucial, she said. Lele spoke with AlertNet from Washington, in advance of a landmark international meeting on transforming agricultural research that starts in Montpellier, France, on Sunday. Q: What are the prospects for finding a sustainable way to feed 9 billion people - up from 6 billion today - by 2050? A: We have to produce research that leads to much more environmentally sustainable solutions that help poor people. There are some technologies that have happened completely outside of the agricultural research system, like the huge growth in cell phones in developing countries, that are important. If more of that technology is brought to bear and we don't just give money to scientists to breed crops, then we can have more successes. In a revolution, you need totally unexpected partners playing a role. Q: What's wrong with how our system of agricultural research works now? A: There are much larger numbers of actors now on the international scene than there used to be. Once it was just the World Bank, the (U.N.) Food and Agriculture Organisation. And the amount of aid from developed countries for agricultural research has been diminishing, which means we have lots of actors with a limited amount of aid and they're competing with each other for it. People think we're giving massive amounts of aid and poor people in these countries aren't using it effectively. But aid has been diminishing as a share of (donor) GDP. Today net increases in aid aren't coming from traditional donors. They're coming from the (Bill and Melinda) Gates Foundation, from emerging countries like China and India. All these actors need to be brought together so we have a new architecture for cooperation. That doesn't exist now. Q: Why is the lack of coordination a problem? A: Very good information systems existed in the 1980s and early 1990s about who was investing how much and where in public sector research. We learned a lot from it. But now that information has become very fragmented. The emerging countries have become big players but we don't know much about what they're doing. The private sector and big companies are doing research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). What is essential is to bring all these people under a large tent and try to learn more about what they're doing.

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Also, quite a lot of this knowledge being created has become private property rather than being broadly shared. We need more science being conducted in the public sector that is not hamstrung by intellectual property rights. Q: You mention in the report that another problem is that donor funding cycles and donor focuses have come to drive research, rather than actual problems driving it. A: In 1972, when CGIAR (the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) was formed, the great share of its resources were untied (from specific objectives). Donors didn't know which projects would yield results and which ones not, so they gave money freely. Over time what has happened, as money comes from more donors, is that funding is tied to the agendas of donor countries, and the amounts for each project are smaller. That is not as effective, and we need to get back to that earlier situation if we can. Also paradoxically, the desire for more accountability for aid money has led to increased requirements for what you need to do to get money for anything. People are spending more time filling in forms and less time focusing on the problems of the poor in the world. Q: How do genetically modified crops fit into a future of sustainable boosts in agricultural production? Some people say they are the only answer; others say they reduce resiliency to problems like climate change by making farmers who have to buy expensive inputs more financially vulnerable. A: We can't exclude any solutions because the challenges are really big. That means genetically modified crops and technologies have a role to play. But there needs to be more information on them and much greater development of institutions in developing countries that are accountable to their own people, so the right information is shared with populations and they can make their own decisions. These decisions need to be made not just by a few people for or against genetically modified crops. Q: How is climate change feeding into changes in agricultural research? A: What the literature shows is that the regions with the greatest concentrations of poor people - South Asia and Africa - are likely to be hit the hardest. But the international donor community for agricultural research has given more attention to mitigation (reducing carbon emissions) rather than adaptation (adjusting to the effects of climate change). I think the reason there's so much attention to mitigation is you can show a win-win. Richer nations benefit from it as well. With adaptation, in the short run, that's not so easy. It looks like: "Give them more foreign aid," and that's not very popular. Many adaptation issues are similar to the ones countries are facing already, only more acute. Q: Are there worries about rich nations, like many in the Middle East, taking out long-term leases on cropland in Africa to boost their own food security? A: That has reignited the debate about large farms and small farms. Some well-known economists say that it's hard to solve the problems of small-scale agriculture in Africa, that it can never develop, so let's use large farms. But one has to be careful. Large farms have higher yields but also use more modern inputs. That's not always that productive in comparison to small farms. And if you don't have small farms, where are you going to absorb those large numbers of people? Not in the manufacturing sector, at least not in the short term. Developing countries have a hard time competing with exporters like China in manufactured goods. For stability and equity, people need to stay on their land. Q: If the amount of aid for agricultural research is boosted and more is directed to grassroots efforts, how effectively will that be used?

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A: One of the exciting things in India now is the role of civil society. It's not yet able to bring about systemic changes but there is no question it has moved in that direction. There's greater freedom of information, more accountability at grassroots level and in parliament. All that has happened because of strengthening of civil society. If more of that happens in developing countries, they will be able to solve their problems more effectively. If donors instead of asking people to fill in forms really build capacity of local people, as USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) and the World Bank did in the 1960s and 1970s, then countries will be able to solve their own problems. Q: What are the risks if your effort to boost agricultural production through better research fails? A: We'll have many more poor people in the world than we do already. The Millennium Development Goals on reducing hunger are already not being met and if anything, more people have become food insecure, according to the FAO. Competition for water is enormous already in South Asia and that will become more acute. There is so much science and so many possibilities that we can bring to bear to address these problems that it would be a pity if nothing happens. Q; What do you hope to have come out of the upcoming meeting in France? A: Not just promises, but delivery on promises, and not just by governments of developing countries but also by donors. Also, better partnerships than exist now, when many partnerships are just rhetorical ones. http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60714/2010/02/25-005212-1.htm

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(UK) Boosting farm production will require broad revamp of research, experts say 29 Mar 2010 10:45:00 GMT Written by: Laurie Goering MONTPELLIER, France (AlertNet) - Feeding a fast-growing global population in the face of climate change and stagnant funding for food aid and farm research will require a fundamental revamp of agriculture, according to leading experts in the field. But unlike the "Green Revolution" that dramatically hiked agricultural production in Latin America and Asia from the 1950s, a new restructuring will need to focus as much on good governance, women's empowerment and curbing commodities' speculation as on new seed varieties, said experts at an agricultural conference. "We cannot address world food security risks effectively only through a science and technology agenda. We need to get appropriate market regulations to prevent excessive speculation," Joachim von Braun, former director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), said on Sunday at the opening of a conference on reforming agricultural research to meet development goals. Speculation in food markets sparks fuel price swings that can undercut the ability of farmers to plan, often leading them to over- or under-produce. Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said lack of political support and financial resources for agricultural research were the two biggest problems holding back efforts to boost farm production and feed what his agency believes are more than 1 billion hungry people in the world. "We have the programmes, we have the projects, we have the knowledge, though it has to keep being adapted and developed to deal with new problems. We have everything we need but political will," he said. The will, however, may be starting to develop because "we have realised the problem of food security is not only a technical, economic, ethical problem," Diouf added. "It's a problem of peace and security in the world." HUGE CHALLENGES By 2050, the world's population of 6.3 billion today is expected to surge to more than 9 million, the World Bank estimates. Feeding those people will require agricultural production in developing countries to grow by 70 percent, particularly as people in increasingly wealthy developing nations adopt diets more like those in the West, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). But the world will face dramatic challenges in achieving that level of production increases. Investment in agricultural research has stagnated or fallen around most of the globe for decades, and growth in crucial crops like rice has leveled off. High national debt levels, in part as a result of the global financial crisis, make boosts in donor aid for research unlikely.

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In addition, climate change is bringing more unpredictable weather, including worsening droughts, floods and storms. Those stresses could slash agricultural production in the world's hungriest regions - particularly Africa and South Asia - and exacerbate existing problems like overuse of aquifers, desertification and erosion. "Climate change will make an already deteriorating situation worse," said Kevin Cleaver, a spokesman for IFAD, the agricultural development fund. Reversing the problems, he and others said, will require a diverse host of changes, such as curbing rich-world agricultural subsidies, ensuring small farmers - particularly women - have rights to their land, building databases to help coordinate research efforts, and finding creative new sources of funding for agricultural research. Simply curbing bureaucratic red tape - particularly cutting the reams of reports donors require researchers to submit for their grant money - also could make a big difference, speakers at the conference said, to enthusiastic applause. "There is a complexity of problems facing the agricultural sector (and we) need cooperation to solve them," said Adel Ed-Beltagy, chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, one of the organisers of the Montpellier conference. The alternative, he said, is "misery" for hundreds of millions of poor people around the world. RAISING AMBITIONS One of the most effective ways of bettering life for farmers in Africa, may be simply to raise the level of ambition about what they're capable of achieving, suggested Kanayo Nwanze, president of IFAD. Working to double the income of a subsistence farmer who scrapes by on $1 a day is simply "poverty management," he said. But helping that farmer launch an agribusiness, perhaps by giving a loan to help buy refrigeration equipment to store vegetables for sale in the off-season, is "poverty eradication," he said. Women, he said, produce from 60 to 80 percent of the food in Africa, though they own only 1 to 2 percent of the land and get just 10 percent of agricultural loans. Any project aimed at boosting Africa's farm production, he said, must focus on helping women. Another missing ingredient in Africa, he said, is sustained political will. "Development is not a project you can turn on and off like a tap," he said, noting that continuing investment is needed to achieve key aims like improving food security. Close to a thousand researchers, scientists, ministers and others gathered at the four-day conference aim to come up with a roadmap for restructuring agricultural research to meet the needs of the world's poor and hungry. The focus will be on quick action, Nwanze said, because "declarations, commitments and speeches don't feed hungry people." Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites. http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60714/2010/02/29-104524-1.htm

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(UK) African farmland leases threaten to drive conflict, but rules could help 29 Mar 2010 17:19:00 GMT Written by: Laurie Goering MONTPELLIER, France (AlertNet) - Large-scale leases of African farmland by foreign investors risk driving conflict and fueling corruption in the region, farm experts said Monday at a conference on agricultural research and development. But if regulations for responsible foreign land investment can be drafted and followed, such leases could provide a much-needed cash infusion for African agriculture which has struggled to find investment elsewhere, they said. "What's missing is it has not been done responsibly enough," said Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). "Food security is a global issue and global partnership can contribute." Spooked by the 2008 food crisis, which sent commodity prices soaring on world markets and by the prospect of climate change reducing farm production at home, countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have poured millions of dollars into long-term leases of agricultural land across Africa. Investors looking for higher returns also have jumped into the market while countries such as China have locked up African land not just for food but for biofuel production. Altogether close to 20 countries have leased tens of millions of acres of land in Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and other African countries, agricultural experts say. The deals have provoked widespread international criticism, not least because opponents fear the proceeds may end up in the hands of politicians rather than small farmers who could be pushed off their land. 'SECRET DEALS' "The real issue in Africa is a lot of these deals are done in secret. The small-holder farmers who stand to lose their land are not consulted. No one is sure the amount of money declared is the real amount," said Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "Increased foreign investment is what everyone has been crying for for years (in Africa)," he said. But on a continent already struggling with widespread hunger, investment that doesn't build food security at home doesn't make sense, he said. Regulating the new investments, however, could help ensure Africans -- particularly African farmers -- get some benefit, Nwanze said. His agency and others are working to create a new international framework on responsible investment in land, which would set out guidelines on how locals would benefit from such deals. For example, investors might be required to hire local farmers already on the land to produce crops on contract for them, rather than bringing in their own workers.

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Land investors could not be obligated to sign on to such guidelines, Nwanze said. But many, faced with intense international criticism, might sign up as a way to defuse tensions and improve their image, particularly in the countries where they are leasing land. The reality, Nwanze said, is that the investment is going to happen, and "I'm looking for a win-win situation." POTENTIAL PROBLEMS Agricultural experts at this week's Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development say foreign investment in agricultural land is nothing new in Africa. Companies like Unilever for decades ran palm oil and cocoa plantations in West Africa, providing workers with health clinics and schools as well as salaries, Nwanze said. The urgency of finding resources to boost agricultural production on the continent, particularly in the face of fast-rising population and climate change, also cannot be overstated, he and others said. But even with new guidelines on land leases in Africa, the deals could lead to growing problems down the road, warned Emmy Simmons, a longtime USAID official and board member of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. Ethiopia, for instance, has advertised that it has 7 million hectares of unoccupied land available for rent, and much of that land is being quickly snapped up by foreign investors. But Ethiopia's rules governing internal migration prevent Ethiopian investors from renting farmland in parts of the country other than their own traditional areas. Such rules are certain to prompt growing resentment as foreigners move in, Simmons said. "No one can argue African agriculture doesn't need more investment," Ngongi said. Investment that results in a transfer of skills to African farmers, that increases the continent's own food security and creates jobs "would be difficult to quarrel with," he said. "But so far, that has not been true." http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60714/2010/02/29-171919-1.htm

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(UK) A solution to hunger and climate change? Try vegetables 31 Mar 2010 13:17:00 GMT Written by: Laurie Goering A West African woman works in a vegetable field near her home with her baby on her back. 'African market gardens' are offering women higher incomes and a chance for greater resilience against climate change. MONTPELLIER, France (AlertNet) - How can Africa ease hunger, improve women's lives and adapt to climate change all in one stroke? By growing vegetables, researchers believe. Efforts to curb persistent hunger in Africa usually focus on boosting yields of grain and other staple crops. But in the Sahel region, where farmers have long battled droughts, more than 2,500 women are now growing greens, tomatoes, onions, aubergine (eggplant) and other nutritious crops in small plots near their homes, using seeds specially bred for local conditions and drip-irrigation systems which save scarce water. In a region where the average daily wage is about a dollar a day, many are now earning over $4 a day in sales from their gardens, as well as supplying their families with food rich in nutrients that are often missing from local diets. Crop failures, which used to happen every two and a half years on average, are no longer a problem. HOW TO 'GROW OUT OF POVERTY' "This is how you grow yourself out of poverty," said Dyno Keatinge, who heads the Taiwan-based AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center, which supports the "African market garden" project with seeds and expertise. The centre this week, with its partner, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), received a major international award for its work in the Sahel. The prize was presented by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) during a conference in Montpellier on revamping agricultural research to support development. CGIAR, a network of the world's leading agricultural scientists, categorises vegetables as a "non-staple" crop, and vegetable production has received relatively little attention in efforts to slash world hunger. But in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Niger and Benin, vegetable gardens - most between 100 and 500 square metres in size - are proving an answer to a wide range of problems, experts say. "AVRDC is close to God in my mind," said Emmy Simmons, a board member of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, a research and advocacy group. The vegetable project, she said, has made a tremendous difference to some of Africa's poorest people and can work in urban areas as well as rural ones - an important consideration as more Africans migrate to cities. ALLOWS WOMEN TO WORK NEAR HOME Besides improving diets and raising incomes, the project's small gardens allow women who once had to travel to distant fields to work nearer their homes, where they can keep a close eye on children and have more time for cooking and other chores.

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Improved nutrition - many of the vegetables have been bred to be particularly high in vitamins - is easing health problems in many areas, freeing women from the additional burden of caring for sick family members. Higher incomes have also given women more status within their families and enabled them to keep children in school, researchers say. Just as important, the gardens are making villagers more resilient to climate change, which scientists say leads to more unpredictable weather. Vegetables have short growing seasons and can be harvested throughout the year, which reduces the chances of a storm or other weather disaster wiping out a whole season's income. Small gardens are also easier to irrigate than large farm fields, and use less water than grain to produce a higher income per acre. MAKING GOOD USE OF SCARCE WATER "One millimetre of rain on a hectare plot is 10 cubic metres of water, which is very, very little to grow any field crop," said Abdou Tenkouano, director of AVDRC's African arm. "But 10 cubic metres is a lot of buckets of water for a small plot." To irrigate their gardens, women are turning to low-tech techniques, including digging small half-moon-shaped reservoirs near the plots to collect rainwater. Most are also investing in drip irrigation systems - where small amounts of water seep from tubing into the soil - to lose less water through evaporation. Another key to the programme's success is the use of seeds specially bred to produce vegetable varieties that are fast-growing, resistant to drought, pests and other problems, highly productive and nutritious. For instance, tomatoes high in beta carotene, which helps the body produce Vitamin A, are cutting health problems related to vitamin deficiency, such as night blindness. And many gardens are producing up to 300 kg of vegetables per growing season, which "has to be one of the highest yields you can think of," Tenkouano said. Researchers admit that encouraging villagers to eat some of the new vegetables, rather than local staples like millet, sorghum and peanuts, has taken some work. Imported vegetables such as cabbage, which are high in fibre but relatively low in nutrition, remain local favourites, and some traditional vegetables like okra and greens can be seen as low-status choices. But farmers are finding ways to market their produce. Some are selling to supermarkets, which put the greens into plastic bags that make the contents more appealing to buyers. BUILDING A SEED SUPPLY NETWORK The vegetable project is also slowly building a supply network for good-quality vegetable seed in West Africa, something that has long been missing in the region. Women are being trained to produce seeds from their gardens for commercial sale. That both boosts incomes and widens the reach of the new vegetable varieties. AVDRC researchers say they now have a seed bank of 400 vegetable species bred to flourish in often harsh conditions, including varieties adapted from the Atacama and Kalahari deserts in Chile and Botswana respectively. "There isn't a tropical environment I can't find you a vegetable for," Keatinge said. "We're ready for climate change." http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60714/2010/02/31-131708-1.htm

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GLOBAL: The Green Revolution's new avatar Food production needs to keep up with a growing demand JOHANNESBURG, 25 March 2010 (IRIN) - The Green Revolution has a new avatar: transformed Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D), and food experts hope it will provide the panacea for hunger. In the 1970s, when half the world's population was hungry, governments, global institutions and agricultural experts brought about the Green Revolution with the help of technology that provided high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat. Within four years, countries like India moved from being food-aid dependent to food secure. "We are facing a crisis of a similar scale and the world needs to come together again to take action [with the help of biotechnology]," said Uma Lele, a retired senior advisor to the World Bank and the lead author of a comprehensive assessment report on AR4D, which will provide the backdrop to a critical three-day meeting on agriculture starting on 28 March in France. The report, Transforming Agricultural Research for Development, will be presented at the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), requested by the G8 group of industrialised countries to identify future food production needs and a course of action. During the assessment 2,000 experts were consulted, including national research organizations across the world. The report hopes to focus attention on the critical need to revive agriculture. "Everyone [in agriculture and food security] has been talking about AR4D as the way forward. We [Lele and three other agriculture experts] were asked to unpack it for the meeting." What does AR4D mean? We need to produce food for a growing population on the same piece of landThe aim of AR4D is to achieve sustainable food and income security for all food producers and consumers, especially the poor, using the same resources - land, labour, water - available within the constraints of climate change and an expanding population. The sustainable system will seek to reduce negative environmental impacts, but cannot be "defined by silver bullets" like a particular technology or practice, because "there are no standard blueprints" and many of the options used in the last five decades did not work. "We need to produce food for a growing population on the same piece of land," said Eugene Terry, one of the authors and a plant pathologist who was the first Director General of the West Africa Rice Development Association. So how does it work? The answer lies in sustainable intensification. AR4D calls for a broader approach and departs from the traditional methods where scientists were kept away from the process that delivered the new technology to farmers. "The focus is on developing technology and adapting it to the local conditions," said Lele. AR4D research needs to happen where it will be used - such as in national research institutions - with a focus on innovative scientific breakthroughs appropriate to local or and even regional conditions. At the local level it will devise methods to assess how new technologies were being implemented. It will adopt a bottom-up approach involving the poor and disenfranchised, and use a combination of traditional knowledge and practices gleaned from farmers, conventional technologies and modern biotechnology. Partners will be sought in the public and private sectors, and in civil society.

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The report emphasized that AR4D was not itself development, but "contributes to it through greater sensitivity ... vigorous commitment to building the capacity of partners, including particularly the beneficiaries and increased accountability, for more and better results on all fronts: poverty reduction, productivity growth and environmental sustainability." Roadblocks Lele acknowledged that many small countries lacked the capacity and resources for research, or were caught up in conflicts that prevented beefing up agriculture. "You need political will to bring about change," she said. Developing climate change-tolerant crop varieties will take time One of the aims of the global meeting in France would be to set up a bigger umbrella of food security players, including the private sector and larger developing countries, to share expertise or help build capacity. "We submit that substantial investments would be needed in the development of infrastructure, markets and human capital, among other things, which are not covered under R&D [research and development]," Terry said. "Many activities that can be rightly carried out at the national or local level by stakeholders are financed and carried out by international organizations in the name of providing international public goods, whereas there is underinvestment in building the national capacity of countries." Terry said governments' "neglect of their own rural areas has often compounded the problems. Donors keen to show quick impacts of the uses of their funds are tempted to allocate them to achieve quick short-term results." Will it work? The World Bank estimated that some 1.4 billion people were living in poverty in 2005, and another 100 million have been pushed into hunger since the financial crisis in 2008. Food production has stagnated in many countries, while the global population is expected to hit 9 billion by 2050, mostly in developing countries. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) put growth in global agricultural production at 2.1 percent per year since 1961, but projected that this would slow to 1.5 percent annually in the next 25 years, and then to 0.9 percent annually in the succeeding 20 years to 2050. The assessment report said the reasons for this slowdown ranged from lower population growth in some food producing areas to a drop in yields. Besides the need to invest in infrastructure, in the capacity of institutions to deliver inputs and distribute food, and in developing people, many answers lay in biotechnology. In most developing countries crop yields were more than 30 percent lower than they could be; in the case of rice and maize in sub-Saharan Africa, the difference was as high as 100 percent, the report said. The high-yielding crop varieties of the Green Revolution flourished in Asia, where agriculture is irrigated, but largely failed in Africa because most crops are rain-fed. Even cereals like sorghum and millet, the staple foods in semi-arid areas, have done better in India than in Africa. "It is because India has spent on research and adapted the cereals to meet its needs," said Lele. Investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) has been abysmally low in most developing countries. Five countries - China, India, Brazil, Thailand and South Africa - accounted for just over 53 percent of the R&D undertaken in developing countries, the assessment noted. Donor aid to agriculture has been dismal, "but there is only so much an outsider can do to help you," said Lele. For instance, in the Green Revolution, several aid agencies helped introduce India to high-yielding rice varieties, but the country went on to develop 200 rice varieties of its own.

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Food insecurity is still present in India and the population is increasing, as in other developing countries. India and other countries that benefitted from the Green Revolution are living with its after-effects, but an incessant cycle of crops has depleted the fertility of soil in many areas. Everyone is need of innovative solutions, and this time they want to ensure that success in food insecurity should not pass Africa by - the focus is on region-specific solutions, which it is hoped AR4D will provide. No time to waste Lele said the need to focus on investment in agricultural R&D was not new. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its network of 15 research centres across the world was set up by the World Bank and wealthy country donors in the 1970s to develop new crop varieties, farm management techniques, and innovations for farmers in the developing world. When the latest food crisis struck in 2007, the CGIAR drew some criticism. "The impact of CGIAR has slowed," said Lele, because the group's research activities suffered when donor funding became focused on short-term projects tied to specific agendas. "As you know, research needs long-term investment." The CGIAR receives only four to five percent of total public expenditure on agricultural research worldwide, and faces competing demands on its resources, the assessment noted. The CGIAR has recently instituted reforms. The authors of the report called on developing country governments to increase their investment in agricultural R&D to 1.5 percent of their revenue from agriculture, but Lele commented that agricultural spending had a dismal history in many developing countries. "The situation will not change until every individual and institution starts taking responsibility. Research pays off only in 10 years or so; we have to start now." http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88559

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GLOBAL: Putting science to work for food security JOHANNESBURG, 1 April 2010 (IRIN) - If farmers in Niger, West Africa, get poor yields in a dry year from a strain of pearl millet, the staple cereal, they can ask their representative organization to contact a research body to find a solution. The research body might consult a regional organization, and if the scientists then need funds to work on a solution, the farmers will have to approve the project before donors endorse funding. This bottom-up approach to making Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) more effective, described as the way forward in helping the world become food secure in the next few years, was endorsed at a critical three-day meeting on agriculture in France which ended on 31 March. Proactive problem-solving was supported in a comprehensive assessment report on AR4D that formed the backdrop to the conference - the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) - held at the request of the G8 group of industrialized countries to identify future food production needs and a course of action, said Eugene Terry, one of the authors of the report. Making science more accessible The crux of the meeting was making science work for farmers and food security, and the answer lay in how to make the science more accessible. Most countries and farmers shied away from genetically modified (GM) crops because they did not understand the science involved, said Terry, who was the first director-general of the West Africa Rice Development Association. "If people are not informed they will be vulnerable to all kinds of propaganda about GM crops." The conference identified eight critical areas of agricultural research, with the development of GM crops as a critical part of the health and nutrition theme. "People need to be told about the risks and benefits of genetic modification, and then they can make their decision," said Terry. People need to be told about the risks and benefits of genetic modification, and then they can make their decision GM foods sometimes caused allergic reactions because during genetic modification certain types of protein were introduced into the genetic makeup. "Research is ongoing in trying to minimize the impact of the 'alien' proteins," he said. "Companies that produce GM seeds spend millions to reduce the toxicity, and none of these seeds can be released without FDA [the US Food and Drug Administration] approval, but the poor man is not told about these things." Food crops "biofortified" by loading higher levels of essential micronutrients - minerals and vitamins like vitamin A, zinc, and iron, in their seeds and roots during growth - were one of the most effective ways of combating malnutrition, according to researchers who work in the area. The HarvestPlus Challenge Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which focuses on developing biofortified crops, said it was one of the cheapest ways to provide essential micronutrients, but most of their work still used traditional plant-breeding techniques. US$75 million could buy vitamin A supplements for 37.5 million pre-school children in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan for a year; the same amount could fortify prepared foods with iron for 375 million persons for a year - about 30 percent of the population of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan - or it could help develop and disseminate rice and wheat varieties biofortified with iron and zinc for the entire South Asia, forever.

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The other seven research themes were: agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable; enabling agricultural incomes for the poor; optimizing the productivity of global food security crops; water, soils and ecosystems; forests and trees; climate change and agriculture; and agricultural biodiversity. "Of course, these are not new themes," Terry acknowledged, but there were deadlines now. Three research "mega-programmes" adapted from any of the themes would have to be finalized by the end of 2010, and the progress reviewed by the next GCARD in 2012. The themes Agricultural systems for the poor should ensure they had access to food throughout the year. "The emphasis should be on high-yielding but short-season crop varieties, and encouraging farmers to go for mixed cropping," said Terry. Small-scale farmers should be motivated to move away from producing food for subsistence and into commercial production, which meant making seeds and technology available. Research would have to optimize the production of global food security crops - maize, rice, wheat - and look at roots crops like cassava. Incessant cycles of crops depleted the soil of valuable nutrients, but using organic manure could help restore some of the nutrients. "The emphasis has to be on sustainable intensification," said Terry. Investment in developing climate change-ready crops was critical, as large parts of the world were already grappling with droughts and floods. Further research into the role of trees and forests in capturing carbon, and the role of the ecosystem in influencing rainfall patterns, was essential. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost in the last century, making research into enhancing biodiversity another major focus. All this research would take lots of money, Terry pointed out. Developing countries have been asked to allocate 1.5 percent of their spending on agriculture on research, and donors at the conference said beneficiary countries looking for funds would have to show their commitment by investing in agriculture infrastructure, like building roads to connect the small-scale farmers to markets. Uma Lele, lead author of the report on AR4D, commented: "We need action, action, action, and abolition - not alleviation - of poverty." http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=88660

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ICRISAT, AVRDC receive CGIAR Award March 30, 2010 Tuesday LENGTH: 196 words DATELINE: Hyderabad Hyderabad, March. 30 -- The India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Taiwan-headquartered World Vegetable Center (AVRDC) received the prestigious 'Science Award for Outstanding Partnership' for improving the lives of countless women and children in West Africa. The award, presented by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) during the ongoing Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) at Montpellier, France, was given to the two organisations for developing techniques for growing vegetables in the deserts of West Africa. They also trained local West Africans to train local farmers, a press release here said. ICRISAT designed the highly-productive, low pressure drip irrigation system called the 'African Market Garden' for reducing poverty and improving nutrition in the Sahelian Region of Africa while AVRDC helped towards choosing the vegetables suitable to the region and their management.

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Conférence de la recherche agricole pour le développement Interview d'Alain Derevier dans 7LTV du 29.03.10 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcrfsc_conference-de-la-recherche-agricole_news

BROADCAST

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(Australia) Agricultural revolution How are we going to feed nine billion people who will be living in a warmer and environmentally-degraded world by the year 2050? The answer: by implementing radical changes, the sort seen during the industrial revolution of the 19th century. In France 1,000 people are meeting as part of a Global Conference on Agricultural Research and Development. Uma Lele is the lead author of a report calling for a new way of thinking when it comes to agriculture. She's a former senior adviser at the World Bank and joins us from the French city of Montipellier. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/2858419.htm

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[No title] 31 March 2010 Interview with Dr. Dyno Keatinge, World Vegetable Center. (Clip available separately)

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[No title] (Jules Pretty Interview, Clip available upon request) Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement à Montpellier (Clip available upon request) http://www.rfi.fr/contenu/20100325-2-conference-mondiale-recherche-agricole-le-developpement-montpellier mercredi 31 mars 2010 2. Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement à Montpellier Ce grand rassemblement de plus de 600 participants issus d’une centaine de pays du Nord et du Sud a pour objectif de discuter des stratégies de programmation de la Recherche Agricole pour le Développement. GCARD Invités : Emile Frison, directeur général de Bioversity international Docteur Papa Aboulaye Seck, directeur du Centre du riz pour l’Afrique

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Global Agricultural Conference Hears Calls for Greater Research and Investment Joe DeCapua 29 March 2010 “Rural agri-business can drive economic growth. Rural agri-businesses can provide a career opportunity for youth. And rural agri-businesses can mean a pathway out of poverty.” The first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development continues today in Montpellier, France. About one thousand participants are meeting to find ways of ensuring food security for a rapidly growing world population. The conference, also known as GCARD, follows the twin crises of soaring food prices in poor countries and the global recession. It aims to come up with concrete action plans to present to the G8 that would boost agricultural investment on many levels. Action, not words GCARD is first hearing from senior policymakers from governments, international aid agencies and others on the scale of agricultural investment needed. Among them is Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, or IFAD. “Let me say at the outset that I firmly believe that results and impact are what count. I have said it on previous occasions and I will say it again today. Declarations, commitments and speeches don’t feed hungry people,” he says. He says the scale of the challenge is “significant.” “There are more than one billion poor and hungry people in the world today. That’s about one in six people of today’s population compared with a marginally better one in seven 10 years ago. Transforming the bleak future of these poor women and men is no mean feat. Indeed, volatile food prices, population growth, low agricultural productivity and the potentially devastating effects of climate change make it a particularly daunting challenge.” Why agriculture suffered The IFAD president says over the past 30 years, agricultural productivity in developing countries has been “stagnant or in decline.” He blames it on years of under-investment. “We all know that overseas development assistance allocated to agriculture dropped from 18 percent in 1978 to just over four percent in 2008,” he says. The amount of money spent by developing countries on agriculture during that same period also dropped sharply. Nwanze says the decline was as much as a third in Africa and two-thirds in Asia and Latin America. But nature plays a role as well. “As for climate change, severe water shortages are predicted to affect between 75 and 250 million people by 2020. And Africa, where approximately 95 percent of agriculture depends on rainfall, is particularly vulnerable,”

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he says. Climate change can be reversed, in part, he says, through reforestation programs, better land management and the rehabilitation of degraded crop and pasture land. But he says agricultural research is fundamental to meeting these challenges. “Agricultural research can ensure that a smallholder, the fisher person, the pastoralists, the forest dweller and the herder are provided with the means to adapt to climate change. It can ensure that poor, rural people, whose lives and livelihoods, depend on the earth’s productive capacity, have the means to produce more and to produce it better,” he says. Agricultural and rural development key to fighting poverty Nwanze says, “GDP growth generated by agriculture has been shown to be at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors.” In recent years, more attention is being paid to the importance of smallholder farms. IFAD estimates 500 million smallholder farms worldwide are supporting two billion people -- one third of the world’s population. Nwanze says with more support, smallholder farmers can increase their productivity to produce a food surplus. He says smallholders can become big business. “Rural agri-business can drive economic growth. Rural agri-businesses can provide a career opportunity for youth. And rural agri-businesses can mean a pathway out of poverty,” he says. There has been much controversy and opposition over the use of genetically modified crops as a means of boosting productivity. Earlier this year, in Mexico, an international conference noted the importance of bio-technology. But it also recognized the potential risks to nutrition and biodiversity. The IFAD leader says 2010 has been deemed the International Year of Biodiversity. “So this is a timely opportunity to remind the world how agricultural biodiversity can improve productivity and nutrition, enhance livelihoods, respond to environmental challenges and deliver food security,” he says. Last July, the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, issued a statement saying, “There is an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger and poverty. Food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture must remain a priority issue on the political agenda.” The Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development runs through March 31st. http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/decapuqa-gcard-ifad-29mar10-89399497.html

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Global Agricultural Conference Participant Hopes to Raise Awareness about Science Joe DeCapua 30 March 2010 The Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) continued for a third day Tuesday in Montpellier, France. About one thousand participants are trying to produce an action plan for G8 and G20 countries to boost agriculture and help ensure food security. Peter Hartmann, director-general of the Nigerian-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, is among those taking part. “My hope is that regions of Africa, Americas and Asia would present clearly what their needs are and where they see science could contribute,” he says. Much to offer “We could contribute a lot because we can boost productivity and we can reduce the waste from plant pests, diseases and just waste from post harvest losses.” There’s been much debate in recent years over genetically modified seeds and plants. Those promoting biotechnology say it can help solve food insecurity, while critics say it can threaten biodiversity. “My view is that it’s a subject that’s very poorly understood says Hartmann. First of all, it’s not one technology. It’s biotechnologies. It’s a collection of technologies. And the second point I would say is that too many people put it on a pedestal as though it’s the savior of everything.” Nevertheless, he says, the technologies have value. “It’s a healthy group of scientific tools that we can use to speed up the things I said we could do to speed up food and agriculture.” Faster growing plants The International Institute of tropical Agriculture was established in 1967 with the financial support of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations to operate in sub-Saharan Africa. It has programs in about 15 countries. “So we are very focused. That’s the only place you’ll find our people,” he says. Part of the institute’s mission is to fight biological threats to key food crops. Hartmann adds, “We have been providing varieties (of plants) that farmers can use to their advantage.” For example, the traditional variety of black eyed peas takes 120 days before they can be harvested. “We provided varieties that can grow in 35 days or 65 days. So when the weather changes or the rains are inconsistent, they are helped a lot by using crops that can grow quickly,” he says.

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Getting back to the land Hartmann says he wants to raise awareness about agriculture’s contribution to economic growth, poverty reduction and food security. “Countries like Nigeria, for example, that had oil, forgot about agriculture. And now they’re realizing that was a mistake and they’re coming back to it, same as Gabon. And when that kind of awareness arrives then we can move much faster because there’ll be support for national systems and universities and investors to look at that sector.” The Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development continues through March 31st. http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/decapua-gcard-iita-30mar10-89508017.html

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Report Calls for Radical Changes on Eve of Global Agriculture Conference Joe DeCapua 25 March 2010 On Sunday (March 28th), the first Global Conference on Agriculture Research for Development opens in Montpellier, France. The meeting aims to address the challenges to food security, including high prices, poverty and climate change. On the eve of the conference, a new report’s been released on how to help meet those challenges. The report is funded by many international organizations and development agencies. The lead author of the report, Uma Lele, is a former World Bank senior adviser. She calls the meeting a great opportunity for change and says not since the early 1970s has the need for agricultural reforms been so great. “Until 2007, there were declining real commodity prices, production was increasing and there was generally a sense that we were accomplishing something. I think the food price increases of 2007 and the financial crisis of 2008 really jogged people into action…that there had been a great sense of complacency about investment in agricultural research and development,” she says. An opportunity for change The report, Transforming Agricultural Research for Development, outlines the problems facing the expected 1,000 participants at the Montpellier meeting.

“Lots of poor people. Nearly a billion people are food insecure today. The Millennium Development Goals are not likely to be reached by 2015. So I think the world communities and those who are concerned about poverty are saying that this is a wonderful time again to try and do some which is similar to what happened when the CGIAR was formed,” she says. Forty years ago, widespread fears of famine and hunger in poor countries led to the creation of CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. It’s an international partnership whose mission is to “achieve sustainable food security

and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, policy, and environment.” CGIAR recently implemented some reforms it says will revitalize it to meet new challenges. Nevertheless, Lele says new thinking and “radical changes” are needed in 2010. “I think there is a general consensus in the scientific community that they have done good research, but they really have not had poverty reduction directly on their minds,” she says. She says new technologies “need to be mobilized to benefit the poor.” Also, G8 countries are no longer the only major players. Emerging economies, such as India and China, now have greater roles in development, contributing to scientific and technological advances. And with more players, there’s more competition for resources, land and bio-fuels.

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Lele says, “So the idea is to bring them all together to see whether collectively they can address these problems better than just working in a very fragmented environment.” Talk is cheap Lele estimates it will cost about $80 billion dollars a year to implement all the reforms needed to ensure food security for a rapidly growing world population. That’s double what’s been spent before. But the former World Bank senior adviser warns it’s not enough to make funding pledges. “G8 countries have pledged $20 billion over the next three years, for instance. You know, in the past, these pledges haven’t materialized. So I think one of the first things that should happen is the pledges should materialize. That’s the least that can happen,” she says. And she says national governments must not only do a better job of investing in domestic agriculture, they must also increase those investments. “Climate change and commodity prices and all these things now require that we spend a lot more resources to address problems, which are going to be much more complicated in the future than they have been in the past,” she says. The new report says global population will reach nine billion by 2050, up from the current six billion. Most of the increase is expected in developing countries. The first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development runs from March 28th through the 31st.

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(Kenya) Researchers have to walk in tandem with farmers By Monty Jones Op-ed

Posted Thursday, March 25 2010 at 00:00 The world’s agricultural scientists have done life-saving work in university laboratories, global research centres, and government agencies. Millions of people across the developing world are alive because of advances that have conquered deadly pathogens, kept pests at bay, boosted yields, and squeezed more food out of less land and water. That’s the good news. Yet despite tremendous innovations and progress in agricultural research over the past half century, more than one billion people remain undernourished in a modern world because the benefits have been spread unevenly, often failing to reach the billion poor people who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. So while the world has rightly learned to look to science for answers, the solutions are taking far too long to help poor farmers. We need to double food supply by 2050. To do that in ways that are environmentally sustainable while bringing people out of poverty, we must reshape and rethink the very architecture of the agricultural system. Global transformation That is why hundreds of scientists, political leaders, farmers, innovators and civil society representatives will travel to Montpellier, France, at the end of this week (March 28) for the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). Our goal is to launch a global transformation in the way agricultural research is done — to develop robust partnerships among those who have knowledge and those who need it. Time is of the essence. Food prices have risen 30–40 per cent in the past three years and the cost of cereals to the neediest countries is projected to rise substantially. The last food crisis, two years ago, sparked food riots in several African countries. Africa’s farmers are not alone in needing scientists’ help. Some 642 million people go hungry in Asia and a quarter of rural households in Eastern Europe have too little land or too few animals to provide a living, yet farmers rarely have another source of income.

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We, the GCARD participants, have been asked by the G8 to formulate an environmentally sustainable plan to help science meet the enormous challenges of doubling world food supply by 2050. The changes we are calling for will create a system that communicates knowledge to farmers and lets them influence researchers’ choices. Jones, the 2004 World Food Prize Laureate, is the incoming chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR). http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion%20&%20Analysis/Researchers%20have%20to%20walk%20in%20tandem%20with%20farmers%20/-/539548/886092/-/s90nr0/-/

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(Nigeria) Agric scientists, others chart path to end poverty, hunger From Collins Olayinka, Abuja THE need for a concerted global effort towards ending poverty and hunger, especially in the developing countries of the world, has again engaged the attention of agricultural scientists, farmers, policy-makers and other stakeholders who met in Montpellier, France to find practicable solutions to the challenges. Failure to prioritise agriculture and rural development in the same way as other sectors like health and education has left many developing countries with gaps in the capacity needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing hunger and poverty. At the meeting, the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), which ended on Wednesday in Montpellier, experts pointed out that the inability to meet rural development demands might leave developing countries unprepared to cope with rapid climate change and a population explosion expected to occur by 2050. A statement made available to The Guardian said countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia - the two regions inhabited by roughly 95 per cent of the world's poor and the most malnourished - were identified as 'battlegrounds' for the fight to cut hunger and poverty. The statement also stated that Official Development Assistance (ODA) to agriculture has dropped significantly, falling from a peak of 17 per cent in 1979, during the height of the Green Revolution, to a low of 3.5 per cent in 2004. It also declined in absolute terms: from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.5 billion in 2005. Dr. Monty Jones, 2004 World Food Prize Laureate and new head of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), during an emotional closing address lamented: "Millions of people around the world are enduring lives of hardship and misery today. We are collectively and personally responsible for this tragedy. I am personally ashamed." However, Jones was quick to acknowledge that tremendous successes had been recorded in agricultural research. He added: "We should be very proud of that. But we should have achieved far more than we have. However, I believe that we have begun the process to put the structures, activities, and programs in place here at GCARD that will enable us to end poverty in this world." The GCARD meeting brought together more than 1,000 researchers, policymakers, farmers, donors, and members of civil society from every region of the world to develop a new agricultural research for development (AR4D) architecture that is geared toward reducing both hunger and poverty. It is the first time all key players, from farmers to donors, have gathered to iron out an action plan for AR4D. The outgoing chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, Adel El-Beltagy submitted: "The conference has enabled all constituents to have a voice, and those voices will be included in the future of agricultural research to help us face the problems we have." The "Montpellier Road Map" was presented at the close of the conference to provide a framework for linking science and innovation to the needs of farmers and the rural poor.

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The confab noticed with concern that women account for as much as 80 percent of Africa's food production, but only receive five percent of agricultural extension training and 10 percent of rural credit. Only a quarter of agricultural researchers in Africa are women, and 14 per cent of the management positions in agricultural research and development are occupied by females. The themes of the proposed key areas of research included: agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable; enabling agricultural incomes for the poor; optimizing productivity of global food security crops; nutrition and health; water, soils and ecosystems; forests and trees; climate change and agriculture; and agricultural biodiversity. In response to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's (CGIAR) proposed themes, participants suggested greater refinement of the breeding and agricultural systems for the vulnerable programmes. Specifically, the CGIAR was asked to broaden its focus to include crops other than the major staples of rice, maize, and wheat and for the agricultural systems programme to be defined from regional to global levels as opposed to global to regional. http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news/achvIndex_html?pdate=020410&fdname=news

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(France) Région : les délégations des vices-présidents LONGUEUR: 517 mots Languedoc-Roussillon. Après leur installation, vendredi dernier, les vice-présidents de la région se sont vus attribuer les délégations suivantes. Damien Alary (aménagement du territoire), Josianne Collerais (culture), Alain Bertrand (ruralité, élevage, montagne), Françoise Dumas (développement économique), Christian Bourquin (transports, intermodalité Logement), Corinne Giacometti (logement), Didier Codorniou (finances), Agnès Jullian (développement touristique), Jean-Claude Gayssot (relations internationales), Anne-Yvonne Le Dain (recherche et Universités), Robert Navarro (développement portuaire, développement aéroportuaire), Hermeline Malherbe (eau, prévention des risques, Aqua domitia), Yves Piétrasanta (développement durable et environnement), Maryline Martinez (intergénération, plan senior, santé), Béatrice Négrier (formation professionnelle et apprentissage). Sont proposés comme questeurs : Joël Abati (sport), François Delacroix (éducation, lycées), Frédéric Lopez (patrimoine), Fabrice Verdier (viticulture, agriculture). Les agriculteur partenaires incontournables de la recherche Montpellier. La première conférence mondiale de la recherche agronomique pour le développement (Gcard) a tracé le chemin d'un dialogue entre tous les acteurs de la filière agricole pour s'attaquer à la faim et la pauvreté et mis en lumière le rôle-clé des agriculteurs. "Le temps est passé où nous pouvions fonctionner totalement isolés" , a déclaré le docteur Monty Jones, directeur exécutif du Forum mondial de l'agriculture, à l'issue de la conférence. "Le temps est passé, a-t-il insisté, où nous décidions pour les agriculteurs" . "Ce sont les gens pour lesquels nous travaillons. C'est à eux de nous dire leurs besoins". Pendant quatre jours, près de 1000 scientifiques, chercheurs, agriculteurs, représentants d'organisations internationales ou d'associations se sont retrouvés dans la capitale languedocienne. Selon la Banque mondiale, 1,4 milliard de personnes dans le monde vivent dans une extrême pauvreté. La population mondiale va passer de 6 à 9 milliards à l'horizon 2050. Des "émeutes de la faim" avaient touché une trentaine de pays en 2007-2008. Pour garantir la recherche et le développement d'une agriculture respectueuse de l'environnement, un engagement de tous les partenaires est indispensable et à Montpellier, "la participation des agriculteurs a été réaffirmée", s'est félicité Pierre Fabre, le secrétaire exécutif de la Commission de la recherche agricole internationale (CRAI). Porte-parole de la Gcard, M. Fabre milite pour l'interaction entre le savoir des scientifiques, leurs idées, leur compréhension physique et biologique des choses, et celui des populations "qui ont des connaissances anciennes sur le fonctionnement de leur écosystème". "Dans l'orientation que l'on peut donner aux recherches, les agriculteurs sont les mieux à même d'exprimer les véritables contraintes qu'ils rencontrent, où sont leurs difficultés à appliquer des innovations qui paraissent être tout à fait judicieuses aux chercheurs mais qui parfois se heurtent à la réalité", a-t-il assuré.

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(France) Les agriculteurs partenaires incontournables de la recherché 2 avril 2010 vendredi LONGUEUR: 333 mots Montpellier. La première conférence mondiale de la recherche agronomique pour le développement (Gcard) a tracé le chemin d'un dialogue entre tous les acteurs de la filière agricole pour s'attaquer à la faim et la pauvreté et mis en lumière le rôle-clé des agriculteurs. "Le temps est passé où nous pouvions fonctionner totalement isolés" , a déclaré le docteur Monty Jones, directeur exécutif du Forum mondial de l'agriculture, à l'issue de la conférence. "Le temps est passé, a-t-il insisté, où nous décidions pour les agriculteurs". "Ce sont les gens pour lesquels nous travaillons. C'est à eux de nous dire leurs besoins". Pendant quatre jours, près de 1000 scientifiques, chercheurs, agriculteurs, représentants d'organisations internationales ou d'associations se sont retrouvés dans la capitale languedocienne. Selon la Banque mondiale, 1,4 milliard de personnes dans le monde vivent dans une extrême pauvreté. La population mondiale va passer de 6 à 9 milliards à l'horizon 2050. Des "émeutes de la faim" avaient touché une trentaine de pays en 2007-2008. Pour garantir la recherche et le développement d'une agriculture respectueuse de l'environnement, un engagement de tous les partenaires est indispensable et à Montpellier, "la participation des agriculteurs a été réaffirmée", s'est félicité Pierre Fabre, le secrétaire exécutif de la Commission de la recherche agricole internationale (CRAI). Porte-parole de la Gcard, M. Fabre milite pour l'interaction entre le savoir des scientifiques, leurs idées, leur compréhension physique et biologique des choses, et celui des populations "qui ont des connaissances anciennes sur le fonctionnement de leur écosystème". "Dans l'orientation que l'on peut donner aux recherches, les agriculteurs sont les mieux à même d'exprimer les véritables contraintes qu'ils rencontrent, où sont leurs difficultés à appliquer des innovations qui paraissent être tout à fait judicieuses aux chercheurs mais qui parfois se heurtent à la réalité", a-t-il assuré.

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(France) Combler le fossé entre chercheurs et paysans; Vu de Montpellier AUTEUR: Carole Rap RUBRIQUE: ÉCONOMIE; Pg. 16 No. 8984 LONGUEUR: 384 mots «La recherche est utile mais il faut qu'elle réponde aux besoins des paysans», prévient Kanoute Assetou. Cette coordinatrice de l'ONG Adaf-Galle au Mali, qui travaille avec les femmes en milieu rural, est l'une des 600 participant(e)s à la conférence mondiale de la recherche agricole pour le développement (GCARD 2010), qui s'est achevée hier. Scientifiques, politiques et paysans provenant de plus de cent pays concernés par l'aide au développement de l'agriculture du Sud, qui affichent maintenant leur volonté de coordonner leurs réflexions. Louable intention... à condition qu'elle soit mise en oelig;uvre, répondent certains défenseurs des paysans du Sud. «Nous sommes là pour dire aux scientifiques que la recherche n'aura aucun effet si les petits paysans ne sont pas impliqués. Les chercheurs le savent dans leur bureau, mais il y a un fossé avec les petits paysans sur le terrain. Sinon, nous allons multiplier les conférences et les résultats escomptés ne seront jamais obtenus», insiste le Gabonais Phil Philo Abessolo Ndong, vice-président de la Plateforme régionale des organisations paysannes d'Afrique centrale (Propac) et président de la Concertation nationale des organisations paysannes du Gabon. Même vision pour la Malienne Kanoute Assetou. «Cela fait des années que nous parlons de partenariats, mais il ne suffit pas de mettre des gens ensemble. Les institutions de recherche disent qu'elles travaillent avec les paysans, mais c'est pour la participation à des réunions et pas souvent pour la prise de décisions. Les paysans ont aussi des connaissances locales, par exemple sur des techniques de lutte contre certains prédateurs, mais qui ne sont pas souvent prises en compte.» Exemple du manque de concertation selon elle, le développement des semences hybrides, alors que les paysans à faibles ressources ne pourront pas payer les pesticides et les engrais qui vont avec. «Quand nous montons un projet que nous savons bon pour nous, il est soumis à tant de conditionnalités de la part des bailleurs de fonds, qu'il perd son essence réelle», estime Kanoute Assetou tandis que Phil Philo Abessolo Ndong pointe le manque de volonté politique. Autant de freins que le Gfar, organisateur de la conférence, a tenté de prendre en compte via une «feuille de route de Montpellier» publiée hier.

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Agriculture : la «révolution verte» selon jacques chirac; Les gens RUBRIQUE: ÉCONOMIE; Pg. 16 No. 8982 LONGUEUR: 112 mots «La sécurité alimentaire n'a pas aujourd'hui la place qu'elle devrait avoir dans les agendas gouvernementaux. Elle se heurte souvent à l'indifférence des opinions publiques.» Dans une tribune publié hier par Midi libre, Jacques Chirac appelle à la mobilisation pour la sécurité alimentaire, alors que se déroule à Montpellier (Hérault) une conférence sur la question. L'ex-chef de l'Etat rappelle que «le nombre d'êtres humains souffrant de famine dans le monde a dépassé le milliard en 2009» et évoque une «nouvelle révolution verte» qui «devra donner naissance à une agriculture à la fois très productive et respectueuse des équilibres naturels et de la diversité» http://www.liberation.fr/economie/0101627425-agriculture-la-revolution-verte-selon-jacques-chirac

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28 mars 2010 dimanche LONGUEUR: 185 mots A SAVOIR Un triple enjeu Aujourd'hui et jusqu'au 31 mars, Montpellier accueille la première Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement, la GCARD (Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development), au Corum. Au coeur des échanges, des questions vitales : que faire pour assurer la sécurité alimentaire mondiale Quels seront les besoins futurs de l'agriculture Comment permettre à un milliard d'humains d'échapper à la faim La GCARD 2010 est la première d'une série de conférences qui auront lieu tous les deux ans. L'organisation locale a été confiée à Agropolis International. La conférence réunit 600 participants d'une centaine de pays du Nord et du Sud. Cette manifestation a un triple enjeu : politique, scientifique et stratégique pour Montpellier en tant que pôle mondial de la recherche agronomique. Personnalités De nombreuses personnalités sont attendues qui participeront à des tables rondes, parmi lesquelles Jacques Diouf, DG de la FAO, et plusieurs ministres de l'Agriculture (Égypte, Sultanat d'Oman, Jordanie, etc.), ainsi que divers organismes internationaux.

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(France) La recherche face aux grands défis mondiaux 1 avril 2010 jeudi AUTEUR: Olivier SCHLAMA LONGUEUR: 433 mots Agriculture RAPPEL Hier, à Montpellier, s'est clos la première Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement A Montpellier, un millier de chercheurs, responsables politiques et agricoles, ont planché durant quatre jours. « Cette première est un grand succès » , juge Pierre Fabre, secrétaire exécutif de la Commission de recherche agricole internationale (Crai) qui rassemble les ministères des Affaires étrangères, de l'Agriculture et de l'Enseignement supérieur français et divers organismes de recherche (Cémagref, Cirad, Inra, IRD...) coordonnant la stratégie française en matière de développement agricole. A ce titre, c'est l'un des membres du groupe organisateur de cette conférence, à Montpellier - la GCARD -, née après les émeutes de la faim il y a deux ans et organisée par le Forum agricole mondial. Après quatre jours d'échanges, une feuille de route été établie. Le but Tenter de répondre à des questions vitales : que faire pour assurer la sécurité alimentaire mondiale Quels seront les besoins futurs de l'agriculture Comment un milliard d'humains peuvent-ils échapper à la faim ? « A problématiques mondiales, solutions mondiales » , a formulé en substance Pierre Fabre. L'enseignement le plus important a été de « faire redémarrer le dialogue entre les différents partenaires » et surtout à lancer la restructuration de la recherche mondiale dans ce domaine. Avec un point fort : d'ici deux ans, seront lancés au moins 8 « méga programmes mondiaux » (sur le riz, le changement climatique...) rassemblant d'ici fin 2010 les meilleures équipes pour répondre aux défis mondiaux : maladies émergentes, adaptation au réchauffement climatique, etc. Dans ce cadre-là, les 15 centres d'intervention du Groupe consultatif de la recherche agricole internationale (CGIAR), une organisation internationale, seront fortement remobilisés. Ce CGIAR est géré par un consortium disposant de 540 millions de dollars par an de budget grâce à ses 64 membres : Banque mondiale, USA, France, Canada, etc. Et des fondations, comme celle de Bill Gates, qui apportent 100 millions de dollars. Tous se sont engagés à doubler ce budget pour le porter à plus d'un milliard de dollars d'ici 2015. Et Montpellier est candidate à l'accueil du siège social.Olivier SCHLAMA (1) La GCARD, première d'une série de conférences qui auront lieu tous les deux ans. L'organisation a été confiée à Agropolis International. L'exposition Mundia Mediterra a été inaugurée dimanche par le ministre de l'Agriculture égyptien, la PDG de l'Inra et Robert Lecou, député UMP. M. Fabre. « Solutions mondiales. »

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(France) Il faut aider à diversifier les modèles 30 March 2010 By Patrick NAPPEZ Agriculture ENTRETIEN Bernard Hubert, président d'Agropolis international, est un porte-parole du GCARD 2010 de Montpellier (1) Quels sont les enjeux alimentaires à l'horizon 2050 euros Actuellement, on produit suffisamment de nourriture pour satisfaire les 6 milliards d'habitants, mais un milliard d'entre eux ne peut pas se la payer. Une partie de ce milliard sont des agriculteurs qui ne peuvent pas se nourrir eux- mêmes. Difficilement acceptable moralement ! Mais en 2050 on sera à peu près 9 milliards. Si on ne se demande pas maintenant ce qui va se passer, on risque d'être surpris... Quels grands changements sont nécessaires pour assurer la sécurité alimentaire dans les 50 prochaines années C'est d'abord une production dont les modèles se diversifient, certains étant plus adaptés à ces petits agriculteurs pauvres qui n'ont pas les moyens d'investir. Il faut imaginer des systèmes de production qui ne reposent pas que sur la motorisation, les engrais, les pesticides. Mais davantage sur les systèmes écologiques, plus à la portée de ces gens-là qui ont souvent gardé une vraie connaissance du milieu naturel. Faut-il remettre en cause l'agriculture industrielle Non, mais faire en sorte qu'elle ne soit pas le modèle unique, le seul considéré comme rentable. Mais jusqu'à présent, c'est ce modèle-là qui a marché ! Il a d'autant plus marché qu'on évalue la performance de l'agriculture sur sa productivité et sa rentabilité économique. On ne mesure pas les conséquences sur les conditions de travail, sur l'emploi et sur l'environnement, la qualité de l'eau notamment. Si on le faisait, peut-être qu'on verrait que cette agriculture n'est pas très performante et qu'on a besoin d'autres modèles. D'où la nécessité d'innover. Quelques exemples Si l'on parle de ravageurs, plutôt que d'éradiquer, il s'agira de contrôler. Autre exemple : la culture sans labour peut être très intéressante dans certaines zones et pour certaines productions. Il faudra aussi développer les techniques d'économie de l'eau car on ne pourra pas continuer à utiliser 70 % de l'eau disponible pour l'agriculture. N'y a-t-il pas un paradoxe à parler de sécurité alimentaire menacée alors que nos agriculteurs sont en crise chronique et disparaissent jour après jour Là, on touche à la question de la place de l'agriculture dans nos sociétés : les problèmes de nos agriculteurs sont liés aux difficultés de la Politique agricole commune à se renouveler. Ça n'a pas à voir avec le reste du monde. Ne faut-il pas aider nos agriculteurs à diversifier leurs modèles Plus on a une gamme de solutions, plus on est à même de s'adapter.Recueilli par Patrick NAPPEZ GCARD : premier rendez-vous mondial de la recherche agronomique pour le développement, du 28 au 31 mars au Corum de Montpellier. Bernard Hubert, président d'Agropolis international. Photo D. CRESPIN

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[No title] (link not available) 29 mars 2010 lundi LONGUEUR: 100 mots RAPPEL En marge de la première Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement (lire ci-dessous) qui a lieu en ce moment à Montpellier, des groupes de réflexions et de travaux se penchent régulièrement sur les problèmes liés aux équilibres économiques et écologiques du monde. Ainsi la Fondation Chirac pour le développement durable et le dialogue des cultures, qui a identifié quatre domaines d'actions prioritaires : - l'accès à l'eau - l'accès aux médicaments de qualité - la lutte contre la déforestation et la désertification - la sauvegarde des langues et des cultures menacées.

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La science seule ne suffira pas pour faire croître la production agricole alimentaire La science seule, si elle n’est pas accompagnée de changements de profondeur, ne suffira pas pour faire croître la production agricole alimentaire afin de répondre à l’augmentation constante de la population mondiale. Nourrir une population mondiale en pleine expansion face au changement climatique et à la stagnation des financements pour l’aide alimentaire et la recherche agricole nécessitera de remoderniser sérieusement l’agriculture, d’après ce que des experts ont déclaré lors de la première Conférence Mondiale sur la Recherche Agricole pour le Développement. Cette conférence a lieu à Montpellier du 28 au 31 mars et est organisée par le Forum Mondial sur la Recherche Agricole, en collaboration avec une section du Groupe Consultatif sur la Recherche Agricole Internationale. A l’inverse de la « Révolution Verte » qui a considérablement fait augmenter la production agricole en Amérique Latine et en Asie depuis les années 1950, une nouvelle restructuration agricole nécessitera de se concentrer autant sur les nouvelles variétés de graines que sur une bonne gouvernance par exemple, selon les experts qui se sont exprimés lors de la conférence. Le changement climatique aggravera une situation qui se détériore déjà Ainsi, « nous ne pouvons répondre au problème des risques pour la sécurité alimentaire mondiale de manière efficace seulement par la science et la technologie » a déclaré Joaquin von Braun, ancien directeur général de l’Institut International pour la Recherche sur la Politique Alimentaire (International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)). « Nous avons besoin d’obtenir les régulations du marché appropriées pour éviter une spéculation excessive » a-t-il ajouté lors du jour d’ouverture de la conférence visant à discuter d’une feuille de route pour réformer la recherche agricole pour atteindre les objectifs de développement. La spéculation sur les marchés alimentaires contribue à alimenter les variations de prix qui peuvent réduire la capacité des agriculteurs à anticiper, les conduisant souvent à la sur ou la sous production. Le manque de soutien politique et les ressources financières pour la recherche agricole font également partie des principaux problèmes retenant les efforts pour améliorer la production alimentaire et nourrir plus d’un milliard d’individus affamés dans le monde, d’après ce qu’a déclaré Jacques Diouf, directeur général de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’Agriculture et l’Alimentation (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)). « Nous avons les programmes, nous avons les projets, nous avons la connaissance… Nous avons tout ce dont nous avons besoin sauf la volonté politique » a-t-il déclaré, ajoutant qu’il y avait des signes montrant que les choses changeaient. « Nous avons réalisé que le problème de la sécurité alimentaire était non seulement un problème technique, économique, et éthique, mais c’est aussi un problème de paix et de sécurité dans le monde ». D’ici 2050, la population mondiale devrait passer à plus de 9 milliards d’individus, pour 6,3 milliards aujourd’hui, c’est pourquoi la production agricole devra croître de 70% pour nourrir tous ces individus d’après le Fonds International pour le Développement Agricole (IFAD).

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Mais le monde sera confronté à des défis considérables pour réaliser cet objectif, ont averti les experts lors de la conférence. L’investissement dans la recherche agricole a stagné ou diminué dans une grande partie du monde pendant des décennies, et la croissance de cultures cruciales telles que le riz a ralenti, d’après les experts, qui ajoutent que la dette nationale élevée, en conséquence de la crise financière mondiale, rend improbable l’augmentation des financements destinés à la recherche. Le changement climatique entraîne également davantage de phénomènes climatiques extrêmes et imprévisibles, dont des sécheresses, des inondations et des tempêtes. Ces phénomènes pourraient participer à la réduction de la production agricole dans les régions les plus affamées du monde telles que l’Afrique et l’Asie du sud. Cela exacerberait aussi les problèmes existants tels que la sur-utilisation des aquifères, la désertification et l’érosion. « Le changement climatique aggravera une situation qui se détériore déjà » a déclaré le porte-parole de l’IFAD, Kevin Cleaver. Pour inverser le problème, d’après lui, il faudra procéder à plusieurs changements, en réduisant par exemple les subventions agricoles attribuées aux pays riches, en construisant des bases de données pour aider à coordonner les efforts pour la recherche, et à trouver de nouvelles sources de financements pour la recherche agricole. http://www.actualites-news-environnement.com/23282-production-agricole-alimentaire.html

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After the crisis, is now the moment to cut Western farm subsidies? Tuesday, March 30 2010 With the US and Europe running huge budget deficits and desperate to cut spending, should Africa seize this moment to push for a fairer system of world trade to help its farmers access world markets? It’s hard to be optimistic under grey skies. But as rain lashed down this morning on Montpellier, France’s centre of agricultural research, the cows in the surrounding hills were sitting pretty. It's worth saying again: every cow in the West receives $2.5 a day in subsidies, compared to 90 cents a day for every child in the developing world. But this global financial crisis presents an opportunity to get rid of distortions. And there is little doubt that at $100bn a year each, US and European farm subsidies are distorting world trade. Anxious governments in Europe and the US scratching around to reign in budget deficits are deaf, however, to calls to radically reduce the subsidies that cripple African farmers’ ability to compete fairly. There has been little real optimism of change this week on the sidelines of the first ever Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development here in Montpellier, which hopes to produce a framework better linking scientists with the farmers using their research. Yes, it’s an opportunity they’re saying, but we’ve been here before. Two years ago during the food price spike the same call was made– and nothing changed. In the West, there are now some refreshing sings of political will for cuts. But they are vulnerable to being snuffed out. Under pressure to cut back a projected deficit of $1.5 trillion in 2010, Obama’s 2011 draft budget proposes cuts of $2.5bn over the next 10 years in direct farm subsidies plus another $8bn in cuts to agricultural insurance. But just like when Obama tried – and failed – the same move last year, the lobbying juggernaught steered by the US agricultural sector is more than likely to stop this reform in its tracks. In Europe, although the UK is pushing for changes to the Common Agricultural Policy, French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently made it clear that he would rather create a crisis in the EU before giving it up. French farmers, CAP’s biggest beneficiaries, cheered. Farm subsidies are an unfair political reality. Africa shouldn’t be wasting its breath trying to change them. But, that doesn’t give African politicians an excuse for inaction when it comes to agricultural policy leaps. There are countries – like China, Vietnam and Brazil – whose agriculture has thrived despite the massive subsidies in the West. The reason? Policymakers who looked 50 years ahead, saw where their country needed to be, and invested in agriculture. Rather than sit back and let the West dump cheap, surplus food on their doorstep, perhaps governments should be standing up to say no. The temptation may be to provide cheap food so that the people don’t take to the streets and riot, but somebody needs to break the vicious cycle says Namanga Ngongi, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Investments in domestic agriculture such as those taken by Malawi, that position agricultural spending as spending for the public good just like money for education and healthcare, will be one way to start.

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The Mediterranean region here around Montpellier is battling its own issues around biodiversity: warming climates are pushing some crop varieties further north. Nobody knows what type of crops will move in to fill the gap, or how the migrant plants will fare in new soils. Africa is facing even greater challenges from climate change. Getting policymakers to listen to the researchers to make sure investments are made with an eye on what can be grown in the future, will be just as important.

http://www.theafricareport.com/typerighter/index.php?post/2010/03/30/After-the-crisis,-is-now-the-moment-to-cut-Western-farm-subsidies

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(UK)

Big food push urged to avoid global hunger By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News A big push to develop agriculture in the poorest countries is needed if the world is to feed itself in future decades, a report warns. With the world's population soaring to nine billion by mid-century, crop yields must rise, say the authors - yet climate change threatens to slash them. Already the number of chronically hungry people is above one billion. The report was prepared for a major conference on farming and development that opens next week in France. The first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) will bring scientists, policymakers, aid experts, businessmen and pressure groups together in an attempt to plot a way out of the hunger crisis. Everywhere you go in Africa you can buy Coca-cola or Pepsi-cola, but you can't buy a packet of seeds so easily Professor Sir Gordon Conway "It's a huge problem," said Sir Gordon Conway from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, the conference's keynote speaker. "We have more than a billion people hungry at the moment, then on top of that we're going to have to feed a growing human population - we're looking at having to double food production by 2050." The Green Revolution of the 1950s and 60s brought vast increases in yields of crops such as maize and rice to Asia and in South America. But Africa remained largely untouched; and even in Asia, yields have plateaued. Fertiliser use on Asian cereal fields has soared 40-fold in 50 years, but yields have only risen about four-fold. Easy harvest "In Asia, the Green Revolution created a sense of complacency, that we had solved the problem - and that lasted until the [food price] crisis of 2007," said Uma Lele, the former senior World Bank official who co-ordinated the report. Restoring nature's capital "What we are looking at now is a much more complex 'perfect storm', because all of the 'easy fruit' has been harvested during the Green Revolution." There was no single, simple measure, she said, that could bring about the yield increases needed in poorer countries, and make sure that the increases were sustainable.

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Ensuring all farmers had access to good information about farming methods would be a good start, she noted, but would require different mechanisms in different countries. Access to facilities also needed to be improved, said Professor Conway. "Everywhere you go in Africa you can buy Coca-cola or Pepsi-cola, but you can't buy a packet of seeds so easily," he noted. Aid organisations working together with business had begun to transform that picture, he said; and when African maize farmers had access to the best techniques, their yields could jump fivefold. But western donors were still more likely to put money into health or education projects than into agriculture, he added, despite the commitment that G8 leaders made at last year's G8 summit in Italy to spend $20bn on agriculture for development. Crop development needs the full range of technologies, the report says Despite the burgeoning wealth in South Asia, millions of people remain in stark poverty. Ninety-seven percent of the chronic hungry live in South Asia or in Africa. "These two regions of the world are going to be most affected by climate change," said Dr Lele. "And that's where the majority if the world's poor live; if we don't invest in research now, that's where the problems will be in 10 years' time because developments don't happen overnight." Combating hunger in these regions, said Professor Conway, meant using every level of technology available, from conventional cross-breeding through to genetic engineering that could specifically give new traits to crop strains. The much-discussed Golden Rice - enhanced with Vitamin A - was in pre-commercial trials, following years of wrangling about patent issues, he said, and Chinese scientists had developed about 30 GM varieties that were almost ready for commercial release. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8585504.stm

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(UK) Investigar hoy para alimentarnos mañana Richard Black BBC, Corresponsal de Medio Ambiente Un nuevo informe destaca la urgencia de acelerar el desarrollo de la agricultura en los países más pobres para que en las próximas décadas el mundo tenga cubiertas sus necesidades de alimentos. Cuando la población mundial se incrementa hasta alcanzar los 9.000 millones para mediados de siglo, es necesario expandir las áreas de cultivos, dice el estudio. Aunque el cambio climático puede suponer una amenaza para lograr estos propósitos. En estos momentos, el número de personas que padecen hambre de manera crónica supera los 1.000 millones. El informe será presentado durante una conferencia global sobre agricultura y desarrollo que se inicia la próxima semana en Francia. La Primera Conferencia Global sobre Investigacion Agrícola para el Desarrollo (GCARD, por sus siglas en inglés) unirá a científicos, políticos, activistas humanitarios, empresarios y grupos de cabildeo en el empeño de encontrar una vía para solucionar la crisis alimentaria. Revolución "Tenemos un gran problema", dijo en Londres Gordon Conway, del Centro para la Política Ambiental, conferencista clave del evento. "Existen más de 1.000 millones de hambrientos y encima tenemos que alimentar a una población mundial creciente, por lo que se hará necesario duplicar la producción de alimentos para 2050", explicó. La Revolución Verde de las décadas de los años 50 y 60 implicó vastos incrementos de áreas de cultivos como maíz y arroz en regiones como Asia y América Latina. Pero África quedó fuera e incluso en Asia el proceso se estancó. El uso de fertilizantes en los cultivos de cereales en Asia se multiplicó por 40 en medio siglo, pero las cosechas se multiplicaron por cuatro. "En Asia, la Revolución Verde creó un sentido de autocomplacencia, de que el problema estaba resuelto, el cual duró hasta la crisis de 2007", manifestó Uma Lele, la ex funcionaria del Banco Mundial que coordinó el informe. Según ella, no hay medida simple o única que permita el incremento necesario de cultivos en los países más pobres y asegure que sean sostenibles. Asegurarse de que los agricultores tengan acceso a buenas fuentes de información sobre métodos de cultivos es un buen comienzo, aclaró, pero esto requeriría de diferentes mecanismos en cada país.

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El desarrollo Gordon Conway señaló otro problema: "Donde vayas en África puedes comprar Coca Cola o Pepsi Cola, pero no puedes comprar un paquete de semillas con facilidad". Organizaciones de ayuda ya han comenzado a trabajar unidas para transformar esa situación, de acuerdo con Conway. Y cuando los cultivadores de maíz tengan acceso a mejores técnicas, sus cosechas rendirán cinco veces más. La dificultad radica en que hay más posibilidades de que los donantes occidentales aporten recursos a proyectos educativos o de salud que a proyectos agrícolas, como expresa Conway. Y es vital que haya inversiones en proyectos de investigación agrícola, de acuerdo con Una Lele. "Si no invertimos en investigación ahora, en diez años nos veremos en problemas porque el desarrollo no ocurre de la noche a la mañana". Para Conway, la batalla contra el hambre se gana utilizando la tecnología al máximo y a todo nivel, lo mismo en la hibridación convencional que en la ingeniería genética de los cultivos. El llamado Arroz Dorado transgénico, enriquecido con vitamina A, se encuentra en fases de prueba precomerciales tras años de discusiones sobre las patentes, recordó Conway, mientras que científicos chinos han desarrollado unas 30 variedades genéticamente modificadas que están casi listas para salir al mercado. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ciencia_tecnologia/2010/03/100325_alimentacion_investigacion_informe.shtml

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CGIAR and IFAD Highlight the Importance of Partnership-Based Research 31 March 2010: At the first Global Conference on Agriculture Research for Development (GCARD) held in Montpelier, France, from 29-31 March 2010, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) introduced its proposed large-scale collective-action programmes through eight thematic areas, including one on climate change and agriculture. CGIAR's focus on collective-action programmes aims to encourage partnership and concrete results. The climate change work is expected to produce vulnerability assessments that lead to better use of adaptation and mitigation technologies. In addition to climate change and agriculture, other thematic areas include: agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable; enabling agricultural incomes for the poor; optimizing productivity of global food security crops; agriculture nutrition and health; water, soils and ecosystems; forests and trees; and agricultural biodiversity. In his opening remarks, Kanayo Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), stressed the need to focus agricultural research on climate change adaptation. He highlighted collaborative work between IFAD and CGIAR, noting that the solution to ensuring food security and mitigating climate change lies in agricultural research partnerships. He called for more research on drought-tolerant seeds, underscoring recent advances on rice and cassava seeds. GCARD is organized by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), in collaboration with CGIAR, and will be a biennial meeting that will replace the triennial GFAR meetings and the annual general meetings of the CGIAR. [Meeting Website] [Blog on GCARD 2010] http://climate-l.org/2010/04/01/cgiar-and-ifad-highlight-the-importance-of-partnership-based-research/

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(India) Vegetable farming helps poor women of W. Africa 23 March 2010 HYDERABAD (Commodity Online): Extreme heat, erratic rainfall, drought bring crop failures in two out of five years in West and Central Africa where the population is among the poorest on the earth. But thanks to new techniques for growing vegetables in the deserts developed by India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Trops (ICRISAT) and Taiwan's World Vegetable Center (AVRDC), a transformation has taken place in the lives of poor woemna nd children in the region. In recognition of this outstanding contribution, both ICRISAT and AVRDC has been bestowed with the prestigious “Science Award for Outstanding Partnership” which was presented by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) during the ongoing Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) at Montpellier, France. “This is one example of how science can change the lives and health of poor women and children,” said Dr William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT. “This ICRISAT-AVRDC partnership in West Africa has massively improved the lives of countless West African children and women. I am extremely proud of this outstanding work of my colleagues,” added Dr Nigel Poole, Board Chair of ICRISAT. The region of West and Central Africa is home to about 100 million people, the poorest on earth. With extreme heat during most of the year and a low and erratic rainfall, drought brings crop failures in two out of five years. Nutrition is poor and mass famines are common. Poor farmers do not have the means to purchase food following droughts. Reduce investment risk by intelligent information The highly productive, low pressure drip irrigation system called the “African Market Garden” (AMG) designed by ICRISAT provided a radical alternative for reducing poverty and improving nutrition in the Sahelian region of Africa. Small irrigated vegetable plots of 100 to 500 square meters have become an important agricultural activity across the region, providing an alternative to unreliable rainfed agriculture. Despite their small acreage, vegetables play a very important role in improving nutrition for rural communities and are an important source of cash income – particularly for women who dominate vegetable marketing and much of its production. The contributions of AVRDC in the choice of vegetables suitable to the region and their management are invaluable. In one recent case in Niger, a group of 120 landless women in the Dosso region started growing hardy indigenous vegetables in degraded land using ICRISAT’s Bioreclamation of Degraded Lands system on a 7 hectare field in June 2006. Three years later, the degraded area has grown to 70 hectares of lush and productive greenery and expansion is continuing. “By applying the methods developed by ICRISAT and using crops such as the new short-duration okra cultivar developed by AVRDC, these women have been able to make an income where none was possible before,” says

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Dr Dyno Keatinge, Director General of AVRDC, headquartered in Taiwan. At present, 5,000 rural women and their households are benefiting from these technologies. “AVRDC has proven with its partner ICRISAT that horticulture with vegetables and fruits is a good way for small holder farmers to grow themselves out of poverty even under harsh environmental conditions,” he added. ICRISAT has a long presence in the region in improving the production of pearl millet, sorghum and groundnut; key crops for smallholder farmers. By the late 1990s, ICRISAT realized that it was essential to provide smallholder farmers with more than just improved varieties of their staple crops. High value crops were needed to increase farmer incomes to reduce risks and improve nutrition. On the other hand, AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center – focused on the alleviation of poverty and malnutrition through the increased production and consumption of vegetables, and has worked closely with ICRISAT for many years. AVRDC introduced the first heat tolerant tomato lines to the National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) in West Africa, which led to the release of the variety Xina in Senegal in1981. It was extremely popular and soon became established as a landrace variety across the region. In 2001, ICRISAT appointed Dr Dov Pasternak to lead its high value crops program in the Sahel, which included the introduction of improved irrigation and management methods for smallholders. This provided the catalyst for many subsequent projects, the foundation for a fulltime presence of AVRDC in the region and the development of a very successful partnership. In September 2003, AVRDC appointed its first permanent staff member in Bamako, Mali, to work with ICRISAT and the NARES to establish regional vegetable variety trials. In 2007 ICRISAT and AVRDC jointly appointed a plant breeder to work at ICRISAT-Niger on vegetable breeding and selection focused on okra. In 2008, AVRDC expanded its work in the Sahel very substantially by appointing a team of plant breeders as a part of a project on vegetable breeding and seed systems funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The partnership of ICRISAT and AVRDC is indeed making a big difference in the Sahel by creating new livelihood options for the most marginalized in the poorest region on earth. http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Vegetable-farming-helps-poor-women-of-W-Africa-27006-3-1.html

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(Congo) Montpellier abrite la première Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement Bulletin-Agriculture Lundi 5 Avril 2010 à 14:30:00 db34810 (France) Organisée du 28 au 31 mars 2010 par le Forum mondial de la recherche agricole, cette conférence mondiale se tiendra tous les deux ans. La première Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement s'est tenue du 28 au 31 mars à Montpellier, en présence du directeur général de l'Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture ( FAO ), Jacques Diouf, et du président du Fonds international pour le développement agricole (Fida), Kanayo Nwanze. Ces orientations visent à guider la programmation thématique sur la recherche agricole internationale. La conférence a réuni plus de huit cents participants, scientifiques, producteurs, représentants d'administrations nationales, d'institutions internationales, d'ONG et du secteur privé. Les deux vocations de la conférence sont de faire reculer la faim dans le monde, et de faire de Montpellier un pôle d'excellence mondial. Les travaux de la conférence visent à faire émerger des solutions afin de faire reculer la faim dans le monde, en mobilisant la recherche et la science au service de l'innovation agricole, de la sécurité alimentaire et du développement rural pour lutter contre la pauvreté. Ses orientations doivent guider la programmation thématique du groupe consultatif sur la recherche agricole internationale, et s'inscrivent dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre du partenariat mondial pour l'agriculture, la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition. Montpellier : pôle d'excellence mondial... Le président français Nicolas Sarkozy a lancé l'idée de ce partenariat en 2008. Il s'agit de mobiliser la connaissance et de l'expertise au service de la sécurité alimentaire, un pilier important de ce partenariat. Au-delà de l'organisation de cette première conférence mondiale, la France soutient la candidature de Montpellier à l'accueil du siège du groupe consultatif sur la recherche agricole internationale. Noël Ndong http://www.brazzaville-adiac.com/index.php?action=depeche&dep_id=38114&cat_id=2&oldaction=home&regpay_id=0

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(Gabon) Le World Vegetable Center et l’ICRISAT récompensés à la Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agronomique 30 March 2010 MURPHY ONGAGNA Montpellier, France (29 mars 2010) — Le World Vegetable Center et l'Institut international de recherche sur les cultures des zones tropicales semi-arides (ICRISAT), ont reçu lundi du Groupe consultatif pour la recherche agricole internationale (CGIAR), le Prix du meilleur partenariat, à la faveur de la Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agronomique pour le développement, qui se déroule cette semaine à Montpellier (France), a-t-on appris par communiqué parvenu ce mardi à la rédaction de GABONEWS Dix années durant, le World Vegetable Center et l’ICRISAT ont travaillé de concert dans la zone sahélienne en vue « d’améliorer les variétés locales de légumes et créer des systèmes viables de production ». Leurs travaux reposaient sur des « modes de gestion rationnelle de l’eau », qui incluaient des méthodes « peu coûteuses d'irrigation au goutte-à-goutte » et des techniques plus classiques de collecte. Au Niger où 2,5 millions de personnes sont touchées par une « pénurie alimentaire chronique », le résultat de leurs recherches (des légumes améliorés) ont non seulement grossis les jardins maraîchers du pays, mais également alimenté régulièrement les marchés de Niamey, la capitale, lors des saisons des pluies. Ces dernières années au Gabon, le ministère de l’Agriculture est engagé dans la production locale d’une nouvelle variété de riz, le riz Nérica, conçu par le Centre du riz pour l’Afrique (ADRAO). Selon les scientifiques, cette variété de riz combine la « productivité du riz asiatique » et la « robustesse du riz africain ». Elle a en outre l’avantage d’être particulièrement résistante aux parasites. Aussi, avec le concours du Fonds des Nations Unies pour l’Alimentation (FAO), le Gabon entend-il également couvrir ses besoins alimentaires, en dynamisant le secteur agricole local. Le Gabon vert, l’un des trois piliers du projet de société du Président de la République, Ali Bongo Ondimba, entend impulser le soubresaut de l’économie verte gabonaise, potentiellement porteuse de richesses. Source: CGIAR http://www.gabonews.ga/index.php/actualite/environnement/1559-le-world-vegetable-center-et-licrisat-recompenses-a-la-conference-mondiale-sur-la-recherche-agronomique

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Global Food for Thought: March 26th - April 2nd, 2010 A Message to GCARD from USAID Administrator, Dr. Rajiv Shah, Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development Blog, March 31 “In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama pledged that the United States would work as a partner with farmers in the developing world to make their fields flourish. The President is following through on his commitment. There is global agreement that it will take a larger and more integrated approach to solve the scourges of hunger and poverty. And in this global vision, agricultural science and technology plays a prominent role alongside empowering small scale producers with better tools and knowledge, enabling them to access market, helping governments make informed and strategic decisions, and sustaining growth through judicious management of our natural resources. All of these are essential to reaching our goals of accelerating progress to cut hunger and poverty.” http://gcardblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/a-message-to-gcard-from-usaid-administrator-dr-rajiv-shah/ See Also: Historic Dialogue Between Agricultural Scientist, Farmers, Policymakers, and Other Key Development Actors Charts New Path, Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development, March 31 Failure to prioritize agriculture and rural development at the same level as other sectors like health and education has left many developing countries with gaps in capacity needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of reducing hunger and poverty. It has also left them unprepared for coping with rapid climate change and a population explosion expected to occur by 2050, according to experts at the close of the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). http://gcardblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/final-press-release/. See Also: Global Food Reserve Needed to Stabilize Prices, Researchers Say, Business Week, March 28 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-28/global-food-reserve-needed-to-stabilize-prices-researchers-say.html See Also: Global Agricultural Conference Hears Calls for Greater Research and Investment, Voice of America, March 29 http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/decapuqa-gcard-ifad-29mar10-89399497.html

http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/UserFiles/File/GlobalAgDevelopment/Newsletter/March%2026%20-%20April%202,%202010.pdf

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THE HUNGRY CAN’T EAT WORDS Friday, April 02, 2010 Roger Thurow - Outrage & Inspire A blunt reminder of the task at hand came from Europe this week, aimed at the powers-that-be in the Group of Eight leading industrial countries, also known as the G8: “Declarations, commitments and speeches don’t feed hungry people.” Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agriculture Development, was speaking to more than 1,000 researchers, policymakers, farmers, donors and humanitarians from around the world gathered in Montpellier, France. The participants in the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development assembled to tell the G8 leaders – from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Russia -- that it was time to put their declarations, commitments and speeches about attacking hunger through agriculture development into action. Nwanze’s broadside reminded me of a plea from a speaker at an earlier conference on the future of African agriculture, this one back in 2004. The official from a West African agriculture ministry rose to say he was tired of attending such conferences in splendid convention centers. It was time, he said, that they all gathered in the fields of Africa to see how such fine words were turning into food. It was actions that counted, he said, not words. The G8 is famous for its fine words. Last July, at their summit in L’Aquila, Italy, the G8 leaders issued a lofty statement saying, “There is an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger and poverty. Food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture must remain a priority issue on the political agenda.” They pledged $22 billion to that effort. As the number of chronically hungry in the world has soared past one billion this year, those gathered in Montpellier urged the G8 to get moving on that priority and deliver on those pledges. The main focus in France: revitalize research aimed at helping the world’s small farmers, who also are, ironically, the world’s hungriest and poorest people. Desperate numbers provided a dire backdrop to the proceedings: Agriculture development aid from the rich world to the poorest countries had plummeted from a peak of 17% of all aid in 1979, during the zenith of the Green Revolution, to a low of just 3.5% in 2004. In absolute terms, agriculture development aid shrunk to about $3 billion in 2005 from $8 billion in 1984. The results of this negligence have been devastating: Africa’s agricultural research institutions are in shambles, rural infrastructure is crumbling, soils are barren, seeds are weak, markets are dysfunctional. The conference stressed the importance of reviving the continent’s research capabilities, especially in the areas of soil, seeds, water use, adapting to climate change, and crop diversity to achieve greater nutrition. And it said these efforts should be focused on women, who, according to a conference report, account for as much as 80% of Africa’s food production but receive only 5% of agricultural extension training and 10% of rural credit. Only a quarter of agricultural researchers in Africa are women, and very few of them are in research management.

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“We need action, action, action, and abolition, not alleviation, of poverty,” said Uma Lele, a former senior adviser to the World Bank and lead author of the conference report, Transforming Agricultural Research for Development. The report says that just to make up for the past underinvestment will require agriculture research investments more than double or triple current levels. “We need for donors to make the contributions that I know they are capable of making.” This was a sharp prod to the G8 leaders, who will be meeting again in late June, this time in Canada. (Rather they should be meeting in the fields of Africa, to see the meager harvest – so far - of their fine words.) While they have often talked at these sessions about aiding Africa, the present escalation of hunger and the challenge to world agriculture is injecting new urgency. Estimates are coming from several quarters that the world will need to nearly double food production by 2050 to deal with increasing population (from 6 billion to 9 billion) and increasing prosperity of formerly hungry places like China and India. We continue to ignore the potential of Africa’s farmers to make. http://globalfoodforthought.typepad.com/global-food-for-thought/2010/04/roger-thurow-outrage-inspire-hungry-cannot-eat-words.html#more

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Les Infos Vertes L'actualité de l'environnement en Méditerranée

A Montpellier, des chercheurs du monde entier sont réunis pour inventer l'agriculture de demain dimanche, 28 mars 2010 Près d'un millier de chercheurs du monde entier sont arrivés à Montpellier où ils commencent, à partir d'aujourd'hui et pendant quatre jours, une réflexion sur les changements radicaux que doit adopter l'agriculture mondiale. Faim, pauvreté, changement climatique : comment faire face? Cette Conférence mondiale de la recherche agronomique pour le développement (Gcard) a été chargée par les pays du G8, après les émeutes de la faim survenues voici deux ans, de proposer des pistes pour réfléchir aux multiples enjeux liés à l'agriculture que devra affronter la planète : assurer la sécurité alimentaire mondiale, à la fois en quantité et en qualité dans la perspective d'une population mondiale qui pourrait atteindre 9 milliards d'habitants en 2050 ; améliorer la productivité agricole tout en préservant au maximum un environnement que le changement climatique risque de mettre à mal; réduire la pauvreté en permettant aux communautés agricoles des pays du Sud de vivre de leur travail et de rester sur place au lieu de venir grossir les bidonvilles de mégapoles surpeuplées et polluées. Près d'un millier de participants, venus d'une centaine de pays, sont attendus à Montpellier: des représentants des organisations et coopératives paysannes, des décideurs politiques, des dirigeants d'organisations internationales, des représentants des 15 centres internationaux de recherche agricole et le président de l'Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (FAO) Jacques Diouf. Parvenir à une coalition mondiale de la recherché Pour Jean-Luc Khalfaoui, directeur des relations européennes et internationales au Cirad, "le maître mot de la conférence est le partenariat : il s’agit d’optimiser les recherches menées en agronomie sur le plan international par une plus grande coopération entre tous les acteurs de la recherche privée, publique et de la société civile. L’urgence est là." Le chercheur espère que la conférence débouchera sur "une véritable coalition mondiale de la recherche contre la faim, la pauvreté et pour la protection de l'environnement et incluera un "Plan Marshall" pour la formation des partenaires de recherche du Sud. Ces derniers doivent pouvoir répondre à ces défis qui sont les leurs et les nôtres." Le choix de Montpellier est riche de promesses Le fait que cette conférence de rang mondial se tienne à Montpellier n'est pas anodin. Ce choix marque la reconnaissance internationale du travail de recherche mené au sein du pôle agriculture et alimentation avec la présence de multiples centres (Cirad, CNRS, Inra, IRD, Agropolis, etc.). Montpellier est d'ailleurs candidate pour accueillir le siège du futur Consortium mondial des centres de recherche agricole qui doit coordonner les programmes internationaux dans ce domaine. http://lesinfosvertes.hautetfort.com/archive/2010/03/28/a-montpellier-les-chercheurs-du-monde-reunis-pour-inventer-l.html

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(France) AGRONOMIE : LES LAURÉATS DU PREMIER PRIX MALASSIS 31 March 2009 Johannes Braun Pour la première édition du Prix scientifique international Louis Malassis pour l’agriculture et l’alimentation, Agropolis Fondation a choisi de récompenser les agronomes Ken Sayre et Sylvia Restrepo. Une distinction qui vient récompenser leur action en faveur de l’amélioration des systèmes de production agricole des pays pauvres. L’agronome américain Ken Sayre et la jeune chercheuse colombienne Sylvia Restrepo ont reçu lundi 29 mars le premier Prix scientifique international Louis Malassis pour l’agriculture et l’alimentation à l’occasion de la Conférence mondiale de la recherche agricole pour le développement (GCARD 2010) à Montpellier. Le premier, primé la Catégorie « Scientifique confirmé », a été récompensé pour avoir élaboré des méthodes agronomiques permettent d’améliorer la fertilité des sols et de limiter leur érosion tout en diminuant l’utilisation d’engrais et de l’irrigation. « Ce prix est pour moi la reconnaissance de mon engagement pour l’amélioration de la condition des paysans partout dans le monde » a-t-il déclaré. Jeune chercheuse de l’Université des Andes à Bogota Sylvia Restrepo concourrait quant à elle dans la catégorie « Jeune talent scientifique » pour ses travaux sur les moyens de lutte biologique contre les principales maladies de la pomme de terre et du manioc. Les lauréats ont reçu chacun une dotation de 20 000 € d’Agropolis Fondation, qui rassemble l’INRA, le CIRAD, l’IRD et Montpellier SupAgro. Le Prix Scientifique Louis Malassis a été créé en mémoire de Louis Malassis, ardent défenseur de la cause paysanne, et père fondateur du pôle scientifique Agropolis à Montpellier. Décerné tous les deux ans, il vise à récompenser celles et ceux qui ont contribué de manière exemplaire, par leur action de formation, de recherche ou de développement à répondre au défi alimentaire et à la lutte contre la pauvreté. 1er avril 2010, Johannes Braun http://www.innovationlejournal.com/spip.php?article5420

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European Commission Rolls Out New Food Security Policies; Agricultural Research Conference Concludes Friday, April 02, 2010 The European Commission (EC) recently announced that it has adopted two new policy frameworks "to help developing countries address food security in emergency and long-term situations" and has called upon member nations to implement similar policies, IRIN reports. The humanitarian assistance framework focuses on "response tools to enhance food security, and also spells out EU efforts to tackle acute food insecurity and malnutrition in crises." The other policy "takes a longer view and spells out the need to support agriculture in poor countries to help them reach the U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving hunger and poverty by 2015," the news service writes (4/2). An EC policy paper (.pdf) outlines an approach to help developing countries achieve food security and recommends that "sustainable small-scale food production should be the focus of EU assistance to increase the availability of food in developing countries," EurActiv writes. The EC "believes that access to food should be enhanced by creating better employment and income-earning opportunities in both rural and urban areas, especially via diversification and trade, thus making food more affordable for more people. It suggests that in rural areas, new jobs could be created in agricultural processing by small and medium-sized enterprises," reports EurActiv. The EC makes additional recommendations related to vitamin and mineral deficiency prevention, regional integration opportunities and price control (4/2). The paper also suggests launching an initiative "to help the African Union accelerate the implementation of the African Land Policy Guidelines, completed in 2009, to secure people's rights to land," according to IRIN. The EC has supported reforming the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization technical committee, "to become the pivotal global institution on food security," the paper said. The IRIN piece includes quotes from food and agriculture experts (4/2). SciDev.Net, IRIN Examine Conclusion Of Global Agricultural Research Conference SciDev.Net reports on the conclusion of the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) on Thursday in Montpellier, France. "Monty Jones, incoming chair of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR) – one of the organisers of GCARD – said that the meeting marked a historic moment because it brought together more than 1,000 stakeholders to develop a new vision for agricultural research for development. 'I think it's the first time we've had this kind of collective input,' he told a media briefing," SciDev.Net writes, adding that "some delegates from the non-governmental organisations community were sceptical about the extent to which stakeholders will be involved in the process." Neth Dano, a programme manager for the ETC Group in the Philippines, said, "From the first day [of the conference] we've been saying business as usual is not acceptable but this all looks like business as usual to me." The article includes feedback from others involved in the meeting. "One of GCARD's tangible results is a roadmap for how better to tailor agricultural research to the needs of the rural poor," the news service reports. "But the roadmap is not a formal declaration, nor is it binding" (Antony, 4/1).

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"The crux of the meeting was making science work for farmers and food security, and the answer lay in how to make the science more accessible," IRIN writes in a story examining the highlights of the meeting, including some of the challenges related to genetically modified (GM) crops. IRIN continues: "The conference identified eight critical areas of agricultural research, with the development of GM crops as a critical part of the health and nutrition theme. ... The other seven research themes were: agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable; enabling agricultural incomes for the poor; optimizing the productivity of global food security crops; water, soils and ecosystems; forests and trees; climate change and agriculture; and agricultural biodiversity." The article includes analysis from Eugene Terry, the first director-general of the West Africa Rice Development Association and an author of an agriculture strategy report released at the conference (4/1). http://globalhealth.kff.org/Daily-Reports/2010/April/02/GH-040210-Agriculture.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+kff/kdghpr+(Kaiser+Daily+Global+Health+Policy+Report)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

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(France) La forte poussée du maraîchage au Sahel africain reconnue comme le meilleur moyen d'en finir avec la faim chronique dans la zone 30 March 2010 Florent Breuil Face à la pénurie alimentaire chronique qui frappe 2,5 millions de personnes au Niger, les agronomes proposent une solution qui permettra aux petits paysans d'exploiter de petites parcelles de cultures maraîchères. Près de 5 000 jardins maraîchers de nouvelle génération ont ainsi été créé au Niger et dans la bande sahélienne d'autres pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest et d'Afrique centrale. Et toutes les conditions sont réunies pour en faire beaucoup plus. Les deux organisations internationales qui ont conduit l'effort maraîcher se sont vues décerner aujourd'hui le Prix du meilleur partenariat, l'un des sept prix attribués par le Groupe consultatif pour la recherche agricole internationale (CGIAR) lors de la Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agronomique pour le développement, qui se déroule cette semaine à Montpellier, en France. Ces 10 dernières années, le World Vegetable Center et l'Institut international de recherche sur les cultures des zones tropicales semi-arides (ICRISAT), une structure qui bénéficie de l'appui du CGIAR, ont travaillé ensemble dans le Sahel pour améliorer les variétés locales de légumes et créer des systèmes viables de production qui reposent sur des modes de gestion rationnelle de l'eau faisant appel à des méthodes peu coûteuses d'irrigation au goutte-à-goutte et des techniques traditionnelles de collecte de la ressource. Une variété de tomates améliorée résultant de leurs travaux se répand rapidement au Niger. Pour la toute première fois, les marchés de la capitale du pays, Niamey, ont été régulièrement approvisionnés en tomates pendant la dernière saison des pluies. Une nouvelle variété d'oignons se montre également très prometteuse, produisant 60 tonnes à l'hectare, près du double des autres variétés cultivées. Les jardins maraîchers produisant ces tomates, ces oignons et d'autres légumes se montrent très rentables, une zone de 500 m² seulement pouvant permettre de gagner 1 500 dollars. Les femmes, qui dominent la production et la commercialisation des cultures maraîchères, sont les principales bénéficiaires de ces revenus. L'ICRISAT travaille depuis plusieurs dizaines d'années pour améliorer des cultures de base telles que le sorgho, le mil et l'arachide au Sahel, une zone sujette aux sécheresses où les récoltes sont mauvaises deux années sur cinq. À la fin des années 90, l'Institut a toutefois pris conscience que les petits paysans avaient besoin de solutions à plus haute valeur ajoutée pour accroître leurs revenus et améliorer leur nutrition, parallèlement à des produits de base plus résistants. C'est de ce constat qu'est né le partenariat avec le World Vegetable Center, une nouvelle raison d'espérer pour les 100 millions de Sahéliens, pour la plupart de petits paysans pratiquant une agriculture de subsistance. http://www.mediaterre.org/scientifiques/actu,20100330095114.html

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Montpellier 600 chercheurs contre la faim dans le monde On compte, dans la capitale régionale, l’une des plus fortes concentrations au monde de chercheurs dans le secteur agricole. C’est logiquement que la première Conférence mondiale sur la recherche agricole pour le développement (GCARD) se tient jusqu’à mercredi au Corum. Les émeutes de la faim en 2008, en Indonésie, aux Philippines, en Haïti, etc, les maladies émergentes ou encore le déclin de la bio-diversité démontrent l’urgence à élaborer une stratégie planétaire. Éclairage avec deux projets montpelliérains : Pl@ntNet et R-Syst. Grâce à des savoirs partagés, le premier permettra, entre autres, d’augmenter la productivité. Le second, complémentaire du premier, propose d’éradiquer une plaie : les insectes ravageurs. Scientifiques, agriculteurs, et politiques vont réfléchir pendant quatre jours à une agriculture durable et respectueuse de l’environnement. http://www.midilibre.com/articles/2010/03/27/Grand-sud-600-chercheurs-contre-la-faim-dans-le-monde-1166144.php5

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(France) Une sorte de G100 de l’agriculture Édition du samedi 27 mars 2010 Pierre Fabre est secrétaire exécutif de la commission de recherche agricole internationale (Crai), qui rassemble les ministères des Affaires étrangères, de l’Agriculture et de l’Enseignement supérieur français et divers organismes de recherche (Cémagref, Cirad, Inra, IRD…) pour coordonner la stratégie française en matière de développement agricole.C’est l’un des membres du groupe organisateur du GCARD à Montpellier. Pourquoi cette conférence mondiale à Montpellier ? C’est la première de ce type. Une sorte de G100 à l’image du G8 mais en faveur de l’agriculture mondiale. Il y a là l’une des plus fortes concentrations au monde de chercheurs - 2 300 scientifiques, 25 organismes - dans le monde de l’agriculture. C’est vraiment extraordinaire. Ils participent à la création d’un pôle scientifique d’excellence. Et il y a à faire pour nous adapter au réchauffement climatique par exemple, ou le manque d’eau. Quel est son but ? Nous ne proposerons pas de solutions toutes faites. Avec tous les acteurs de la recherche, les ONG, etc., on va réfléchir à une nouvelle architecture agricole dans le monde. Ensuite, on réfléchira à trois thèmes principaux : assurer la sécurité alimentaire de tous ; lutter contre la pauvreté des paysans ; et le respect de l’environnement.Notre priorité, concrètement, sera de définir comment on va diviser le travail ; éviter des doubles emplois dans les labos pour plus d’efficacité. A la fin de cette conférence qui sera renouvelée tous les deux ans, nous proposerons une feuille de route. C’est une démarche exceptionnelle qui n’existe nulle part ailleurs. Y a-t-il urgence ? Oui. Il y a les intérêts nationaux, géopolitiques mais nous lançons un grand chantier. Il y a des exacerbations : le retour en force de la question de la sécurité alimentaire (avec la faim dans le monde, avec la crise des prix 2008 et les émeutes de la faim), les maladies émergentes, le déclin de la bio-diversité. Il y aura aussi la question des OGM, à un moment ou à un autre. Olivier SCHLAMA http://www.midilibre.com/articles/2010/03/27/Faim-Une-sorte-de-G100-de-l-agriculture-1166158.php5

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Published online 14 April 2010 | Nature 464, 969 (2010) | doi:10.1038/464969a

News: Q&A

What it will take to feed the world

Nature talks to the chief executive of France's national agricultural institute.

Declan Butler

HAMILTON/REA

Marion Guillou is the chief executive of France's National Institute for Agricultural Research, Europe's largest agricultural-research agency. She talks to Declan Butler about how researchers are trying to meet the challenge of feeding a world population that is estimated to grow to 9 billion people by 2050.

Agricultural researchers held the first ever Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development last week in Montpellier. What came out of that?

The conference showed that agricultural researchers are mobilized and recognize themselves as a global community. At the same time, there is strong tension between the CGIAR [Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research] international research centres and the global agricultural research community. The centres tend to be too closed to those outside, and there is pressure to open them up to national and other agricultural research bodies.

Developing countries at the conference also sent a strong message about the return in strength of family farms; that making these more productive is key to both alleviating poverty and meeting local and global food demand. It's a new political message: count on and help small farms. The international focus has long been on large-scale industrial farming, so this changes quite a few things. The themes of research for smallholdings are very different from those of large-scale farming, involving, for example, concepts such as crop rotation, complements of animals and plants, and the use of animal waste as fertilizer, so the research questions are not the same.

What are the most promising routes to feeding 9 billion people?

The first priority is to fight loss and waste. We lose as much as 30 to 35% of the world's food output. That gives us a large margin of manoeuvre to increase the food available. We are doing research with food processors and distributors to explore solutions. We certainly won't be able solve the problem, but we can improve it.

Diet will also be a major determinant in our capacity to nourish the world [animal products require considerably more energy and land than plants]. We need to ensure food availability of 3,000 kilocalories a day per person, of which only 500 kilocalories is from animal products — we are not trying to transform everyone into vegetarians. This provides a healthy and satisfying diet, but is far from a typical Western diet. If we continue the current dietary regime typical of OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries, and if many other countries follow us on this trajectory, we will not have the same results in terms of food availability as we would with a more moderate diet worldwide.

What's the role of food prices?

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One really big research area is studying the volatility of prices. It is the main problem. Remember the food riots in several countries in 2008? We are still trying to understand what happened, but much of it was because of financial speculation. We already have enough food to feed everyone on the planet at 3,000 kilocalories per day, but it is a question of price. We need research to find out which economic tools are available to stabilize prices at the international level, and to ensure, for example, adequate available reserves of cereal. We need to propose economic solutions, and regulation of markets of agricultural foodstuffs to avoid the yo-yo whereby prices can go so high that people do not have access to food. We also have to guarantee minimum prices if farming is to remain viable.

Much media coverage on developing-world agriculture has focused on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Are these the silver bullets they are often made out to be?

It's clear that genetic progress in the past in France and other rich countries accounted for much of the increase in production, so genetics is far from passé; it's still the number-one technique for increasing yields, for example. For Africa to improve its yields, we clearly need new genetically selected varieties, engineered by either genetic modification or classic breeding techniques. For me, GMOs are not a magic bullet, but we should not refuse them a priori. It's critical to look at GMOs on a case-by-case basis. The first generation of genetically modified organisms on the market is not the one that will solve Africa's problems, although one crop, a Chinese GMO cotton that is resistant to bollworm, has proved extremely useful to the population, because it avoids the spraying of dangerous pesticides — the risk–benefit equation is clearly in favour of its use.

We are now at a stage where we have years of extensive research results on the ecological, economic and health aspects of many GMOs. There are GMOs for which the assessment is undisputedly positive, but there are others — in particular some crops engineered to be resistant to this or that herbicide — for which this is not so. For example, some GMOs result in increased use of herbicides, which can lead to concentration of these chemicals in the environment and negative effects. The results are mixed — that's why it is important not to speak of GMOs in general, but case-by-case. Pest resistance is a really promising and important application for genetic selection because there are a lot of health problems in developing countries that have been linked to the spraying of pesticides.

Public funding of agricultural research in rich countries has declined, and is increasingly shifting to the private sector, which has less interest in the needs of poorer countries. What's the overall funding outlook?

We need to continue to innovate and reinvest, in particular to increase yields. This isn't happening in rich countries, but worldwide budgets are on the increase — largely in emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil. China is heavily involved in training and technology transfer to Africa, and in Europe we should be trying to offer Africans an alternative; we have the scientific capacity. It would be a pity if we were to leave all collaborations in the hands of the Chinese.

This is a translated and edited version of an interview conducted in French.

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Future funding for agricultural research uncertain Financial donors wrangle over global research group's strategy. Published online 31 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.165 News Natasha Gilbert Financial donors to a global network of 15 agricultural research centres want changes to the way the influential group plans to reshape its research programme. The tensions, voiced at a conference in Montpellier, France, raise questions over future funding for the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), which supports thousands of scientists working on agriculture and food security in developing countries. Debate over the CGIAR's future direction and funding reforms is a key part of this week's Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development, where the world's major agricultural research funders, scientists and research users, including farmers, are thrashing out a new direction for the area, helping to set national and international research agendas. The CGIAR is expecting its centres' combined budget to increase from about US$500 million today to $1 billion in five to ten years. The lion's share of that funding comes from financial donors that include government agencies in the United States and United Kingdom, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But donors have yet to make firm commitments to the budget increase — which hinges on wide-reaching organizational changes voted for in December 2009, and on a new research strategy currently up for discussion. The Montpellier conference marks their first chance to influence the CGIAR's research plan, a key draft of which was released on 20 March. Agricultural strategy Under the proposed reforms, donor contributions would go into a common pot, which would then be distributed among eight broad research areas, or 'mega programmes'. These include 'climate change and agriculture' and 'mobilizing agricultural biodiversity for food security and resilience'. (By contrast, donors currently fund individual centres directly, either through specific projects or as a lump sum.) The idea is to cut out research overlap between centres, create a clear mission and refocus research on the questions and problems donors want tackled. Donors say that they want this reform process accelerated, and to see more flesh on the bones of the outlined research proposals. In particular, they want to see three fast-tracked research programmes launched by the end of the year, including one on the impact of climate change on agriculture, says Jonathan Wadsworth, senior agricultural research adviser to Britain's Department for International Development (DFID). DFID is one of the centre's largest donors, and has said that it wants to double funding to the group in future. But Wadsworth told Nature that funding hikes will depend on the reforms, and on the centres achieving their research targets. "As the reforms speed up, funding will increase," he says. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private foundation, contributes around $80 million per year to the CGIAR's budget and has committed funding to the centres until 2013. Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of the foundation's agriculture development division, says future commitments will depend on the centres focusing their research on a core set of well-defined problems that need to be tackled, rather than the proposed broad programmes.

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"If you just have broad programme themes, this is not reform," he told Nature. Rather, he suggests, the proposals should be more specific: for example, research on how to increase the productivity of stress-tolerant rice in Asia, and to identify the management and policy infrastructures required to encourage farmers to adopt these crops. Changes to be made There is "some truth" in Pingali's criticisms, says Colin Chartres, director general of the International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka, one of the CGIAR's centres. But he says that he and others developing the reforms have deliberately not presented specific ideas so that the conference participants, including farmers, can have input into the strategy. "For us this is an early stage in the reform process, although the donors think we have been at it for a while," he says. Carlos Pérez del Castillo, chair of the CGIAR's consortium board, which was set up as part of management reforms and now oversees the group's centres and discusses funding with donors, told a press briefing that changes would be made to the mega programmes to incorporate concerns expressed at the conference. In particular, the CGIAR would focus research on specific regions, and target the more vulnerable groups of people for its programmes. Proposals to focus research on maize (corn), rice and wheat would be broadened to include other crops such as beans and cassava. A meeting on 24 May will decide which of the broad programmes will be the first to be put to donors for funding decisions, Pérez del Castillo added. Chartres thinks that donors will be able to see detailed proposals for three programmes by October. CGIAR's draft plan is at http://alliance.cgxchange.org/latest-news/draftstrategyandresultsframeworkfordiscussionatgcard http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100331/full/news.2010.165.html

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The science of food security

Op-ed

Adel El-Beltagy & Mahmoud Solh A few thousand years ago, farmers in the Fertile Crescent — the sickle-shaped region stretching from modern-day Egypt through Lebanon, Syria, southern Turkey and Iraq — gave birth to modern agriculture, and, in turn, provided a foundation from which modern societies and human civilization could grow and prosper. Many of the world's major food crops, including wheat, originated in the region. Nearly 10,000 years later, the food situation in the region where domesticated farming began is now among the most volatile in the world. Rising food prices in 2008 sent thousands onto the streets in protest. Today, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the most dependent on food imports, and projections indicate that this reliance will increase dramatically over the next two decades. For governments in the MENA region, the challenges of population growth, climate change, impending water shortages and desertification pose a significant threat to regional efforts to reduce poverty and to ensure food security for millions. A 'perfect storm' is approaching 'the cradle of agriculture'. In response to these dire forecasts, governments have been quick to respond with the policy reforms needed to expand safety nets for the poor and to attract new investments in the agricultural sector, including agricultural research. Increasing investments in agricultural research and development should be a top priority for governments in the region. Over the years, consistently high rates of return have been demonstrated for agricultural research. Despite average rates of return of 36% in Arab countries, however, the agricultural research sector receives less funding than in any other region in the world. Another promising development is that agricultural ministers from several countries in the region, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Afghanistan, Tunisia and Syria, will attend the first ever Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) in Montpellier, France, from 28 to 31 March 2010. These ministers, along with other political leaders, scientists, farmers and representatives of civil society, will lend their voices to a new effort to reform the agricultural research agenda and mobilize themselves as part of a community working together to improve the agricultural-research-for-development system. This effort comes at a critical time. Recent droughts in the region have demonstrated the realities of climate change. Recent global food and financial crises have also demonstrated the vulnerability of the region to global economic change. Urgent actions are needed now to make the region's farming systems more resilient to a changing environment. Farmers in the MENA region are accustomed to raising their crops and livestock in a harsh environment. Today, however, they need scientists to help them adapt their farming systems to the uncertainties generated by climate change, and to develop new productive options that link them securely to markets. Farmers also need science to

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help develop new crop varieties and management practices to ensure that reliable harvests can be achieved sustainably without exhausting already scarce water resources. Uniquely, GCARD will bring together individuals who are generating and using agricultural knowledge — whether in laboratories or villages — to share ideas and experiences that will inform a strategy for addressing these challenges. In some cases, we might have to rethink and cast aside old approaches to solve new problems. For example, climate change will affect rainfall and temperature patterns. This will have a direct impact on already scarce water supplies in most countries in the region. Access to water has a direct impact on access to food. To avert future food, economic and social crises, we must form a united front to address water use in agriculture today. Scientists cannot tackle these problems alone. Farmers are under constant pressure to produce greater quantities of food crops for rapidly expanding populations. This increases the pressure on the land through continuous cropping and intensification of agricultural land use. Together with shifting dietary needs and persistent water shortages, this increases the demands on science to solve problems. We are therefore calling for change that will create a system for communicating knowledge to farmers, while also allowing them to influence researchers and the choices that they make about which problems to study and which solutions to pursue. This call for change coincides with reforms being carried out by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) — a global alliance comprising some 8,000 researchers — intended to enhance its ability to fulfil its mandate to fight poverty and hunger while conserving the environment. These reforms in the international system must be coupled with reforms and new investments at the national level, to make sure that the results delivered by research can be used by farmers and that international efforts are linked with national strategies to improve food security. One of the international centres supported by the CGIAR is the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which has a global mandate for improving agriculture in dry places including the MENA countries. ICARDA has been carrying out agricultural research in the region for more than 30 years, in partnership with national research, extension and development institutions. The Middle East pioneered the first innovations in agriculture, and it is now time for us to rise to the challenge and help to bring forth a farmer-focused approach to research and development for the twenty-first century. This transformation will not be easy, and will need unwavering support from governments, farmers, scientists, and other leaders in the public and private sectors. For the MENA region, time is of the essence. Adel El-Beltagy is the outgoing chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR); Mahmoud Solh is the director general of the ICARDA. http://www.nature.com/nmiddleeast/2010/100327/full/nmiddleeast.2010.126.html

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Oui, les émeutes de la faim peuvent recommencer" lundi, 29 mars 2010 Jacques Diouf Diouf.jpgest Directeur de l'Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (FAO) . Il participe aujourd'hui à Montpellier à la Conférence mondiale sur la sécurité alimentaire. Deux ans après les émeutes de la faim. Nouvel Observateur : Vous venez de déclarer que le risque d'une nouvelle crise alimentaire et d'émeutes de la faim comme en 2008 est possible ? Jacques Diouf : Oui, tout simplement parce que l'ensemble des facteurs qui ont conduit à cette crise de l'offre sont toujours là. Et que la demande ne cesse de se renforcer : la population mondiale augmente de 78,5 millions d'être humains chaque année NO/ C'est l'équivalent démographique d'une France de plus par an ... Jacques Diouf : Exact . Et en Chine où l'on est à prés de 10% de croissance économique, la demande devient nettement plus qualitative. C'est plus de viande et plus de lait qui sont exigés. Et c'est autant de céréales de plus qui sont nécessaires et qui manquent pour le Milliard de ceux qui ne mangent pas à leur faim.Faim.jpg NO/ Un relative bonne nouvelle tout de même : les stocks de céréales qui étaient au plus bas depuis trente ans en 2007 sont revenus à un étiage normal. Jacques Diouf : La production céréalière, principalement celle de l'Europe, du Canada ou de l'Australie, a augmenté de 13%. Mais attention, si on regarde les seuls pays du Tiers monde, là où la demande est la plus forte, la croissance n'est plus que de 1,3% et si on retranche le Brésil, la Chine et l'Inde, elle est à peine de 0,8%... C'est dire si cette bonne nouvelle est à la fois relative et fragile. NO Et sur le reste des facteurs de crise ? Jacques Diouf : Il y a d'abord, l'altération de la production du fait du changement climatique. On voit se multiplier des phénomènes extrêmes. Sécheresse extrême ou inondations extrêmes. Et parfois les deux successivement. Il faut aussi rappeler la concurrence des Bio Carburants : c'est l'équivalent de 100 Millions de tonnes de céréales qui ne prennent plus le chemin des assiettes mais des pompes à essence. Et enfin l'augmentation des coûts des hydrocarbures : on est passé de 30 $ le Baril à plus de 80 $, ce qui qui pèse lourdement sur le prix des intrants. NO/ La solution , c'est la culture vivrière ? Jacques Diouf : C'est la production tout court ! Prenez le cas de l'Afrique sub sahélienne : 90% du rendement des terres agricoles dépend des pluies. Il faut donc des systèmes d'irrigation . Mais aussi des capacités de stockage : 40 à 60% des récoltes est perdue faute de conservation convenable. Ensuite il faut des routes et un accès aux semences et au bétail. C'est basique, mais elle est là l'urgence ! NO/ Vous avez plusieurs fois exprimé votre réserve sur les OGM ...

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Jacques Diouf : Et ma position n'a pas changé car les faits sont têtus. Prenez l'Afrique : le problème N°1 , ce n'est certainement pas la question des semences génétiquement modifiées ! Mais encore une fois de l'eau, des routes et du stockage. Utilisons donc les semences classiques de la Révolution verte d'hier qui sont trés efficaces pour que les populations puissent se nourrir là où elles vivent. NO/ Pourtant, les semences OGM semblent continuer leur progression partout dans le monde ... Jacques Diouf : Pas partout. Seulement là où il y a une volonté d'exporter. Or sur la planète, la question centrale, ce n'est pas d'exporter, c'est d'abord de se nourrir sur place ! NO/ Il y a eu une polémique sur la réunion qui s'était tenu à la FAO et qui concluait que l'Agriculture Biologique était à même de nourrir la population mondiale. Ce n'était pas une conclusion de la FAO. Alors quel est l'avis du Directeur de la FAO ? Jacques Diouf : Nous accueillons beaucoup de réunions et elles n'engagent pas toutes la FAO. Ceci dit, il faut développer l'Agriculture Biologique. On ne le dit pas assez mais, faute d'argent pour avoir accès à l'engrais de synthèse, 500 millions de petits producteurs, soit un bassin de 2 Milliards de personnes, sont de facto des agriculteurs biologiques ! Et là où c'est possible, oui, il faut développer l'engrais organique et la lutte biologique intégrée contre les prédateurs. Vous savez, en Indonésie, on a pu diminuer de 15% l'utilisation des pesticides avec des méthodes organiques et augmenter la production de 10% ! Maintenant, si vous me dites que l'on va pouvoir faire face à 9 Milliards de bouches en 2050 sans avoir recours aux engrais, je vous dirai que ce n'est pas sérieux. Propos recueillis par Guillaume Malaurie

http://planete.blogs.nouvelobs.com/archive/2010/03/29/oui-les-emeutes-de-la-faim-peuvent-recommencer.html

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(India) Imposed poverty and hunger

Op-ed

Caroline Boin Those calling for radical change to feed a growing world population ignore that the poor are not undernourished due to food shortage but because of Government policies How to feed nine billion people by 2050 has been a big worry since food prices rose drastically in 2007-08. But any fight against hunger must deal with the one billion people who lack food right now. Calls for ‘new thinking’ and a lot more money appear in a report for a 1,000-delegate Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development, this week in Montpellier, France. The world could need 70 to 100 per cent more food over the next four decades to meet demand from population growth and from higher incomes in such countries as India and China. But those calling for radical change ignore two things. First, the world has drastically increased food output before. With discoveries like hybrid seeds, we were able to grow twice as much cereal on the same land. China increased food production by 3.5 over the past 50 years. Food production far outstripped population growth in the 20th century, despite widespread pessimism. And the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says there is enough land and water to allow this to continue through the 21st century. Second, hunger is mainly caused by bad Government policies, from import restrictions to internal duties and lack of property rights, keeping prices artificially high. Barriers to trade are four times higher in developing countries than in rich countries: The average tariffs on agricultural products in the developing world were 15.2 per cent in 2001 — compared to 2.8 per cent in high-income OECD countries. These counter-productive and cruel policies push up the price of food amid widespread malnutrition. In India, for example, Governments have consistently punished agriculture. Price fixing, subsidies and restrictions on land ownership and transfer keep farming largely manual and inefficient. With no incentives, there is little investment in infrastructure and research. These policies also cause waste. Some 30 to 40 per cent of food in India, Africa and other developing regions is lost because of poor infrastructure, poor storage and bureaucratic delays, especially at customs. Rarely has Government interference been as damaging as throughout the food crisis. The price of wheat, maize and rice more than doubled in less than two years. Despite adequate supplies, rice peaked above all others due to an Indian ban on rice exports which caused panic buying among importers.

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Despite widespread condemnation from the UN, the World Bank and heads of states, export bans and restrictions were common throughout and after the food crisis. In fact, over 40 countries — including 15 in Sub-Saharan Africa — have restricted food trade in the past year, helping prices stay around 20 per cent higher than before the crisis in many developing countries. Although the subsidies that the US and EU lavish upon their already wealthy farmers do indeed disadvantage poor farmers around the world, developing countries have the most to gain from liberalising their own agricultural sectors, a World Bank analysis of the stalled World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round shows. Simply put, there is no need to wait for the West to deal with its own vested interests. Hunger is caused not just by barriers against the movement of food itself but barriers against technology. Although technology such as hybrid seeds and drip irrigation are making a big difference by increasing yields and lowering food prices in countries such as Malawi, tariffs and other harmful policies elsewhere have driven up their price and put them out of farmers’ reach. As a result, only four per cent of arable land in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated, compared to 38 per cent in Asia. Fertiliser application in Africa is a tiny average of eight kilos per hectare, compared to a developing-world average of 107 kilos. Food production has actually fallen in Africa over the past 30 years. Before dreaming up complicated and expensive investments and research for the future, Governments should spare a thought for those who are going hungry today because poverty and hunger are imposed on them. Removing barriers to the production and movement of food and technology would be a cheap and easy step towards feeding the world. -- The writer is a Project Director at International Policy Network, London, an independent think-tank working on economic development. http://www.dailypioneer.com/245617/Imposed-poverty-and-hunger.html

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(Argentina)

Si la agricultura no cambia su estructura de investigación y desarrollo, el mundo se las vería negras para afrontar las necesidades alimentarias 27/03/2010 - Si la agricultura no cambia su estructura de investigación y desarrollo para favorecer proyectos locales en menor escala, el mundo se las vería negras para afrontar las necesidades alimentarias frente a los golpes del cambio climático global, dice el GUARD, grupo de trabajo del G8 en Londres Para hacer frente tanto a la degradación del medioambiente como a las necesidades de 9 mil millones de personas, la agricultura a nivel mundial debería experimentar en los próximos años un cambio de similar escala que el producido por la Revolución Industrial que transformó el mundo entre los siglos XIX y XX. ¿A qué se refiere esta sentencia, surgida del informe científico Transforming Agricultural Research for Development, cuyo avance fue dado a conocer esta semana en Londres? Fundamentalmente, dijeron los representantes de la GUARD, a cambiar el “sistema global fragmentado de investigación y desarrollo”, a fin de alcanzar mejores proyectos agropecuarios de pequeña escala, mientras se mejora la producción de alimentos y mientras los métodos de producción cobran mayor capacidad de respuesta “a las futuras crisis climáticas y energéticas”. GUARD es la Conferencia Global sobre Investigación Agrícola para el Desarrollo, instrumento fijado por el grupo de los ocho países más poderosos de la Tierra –“G8”– para delegar la búsqueda conjunta de soluciones para el mundo en torno de este tema que resulta imposible soslayar. El informe adelantado esta semana forma parte de los pasos preparatorios de la conferencia, que se desarrolla entre el 28 y el 31 de marzo en la ciudad francesa de Montpellier, y entre quienes lo redactaron figuran el Departamento de Desarrollo Internacional del Reino Unido y la Comisión Europea del Banco Mundial. Según estimaciones del Banco Mundial, 1.400 millones de personas estaban viviendo bajo la línea de pobreza ya en 2005 en el mundo, antes del crecimiento global del precio de los alimentos que se dio en 2007 y la crisis financiera de 2008. Hoy suponen que hay unos 100 millones más. “Está claro que la meta de reducir el hambre mundial para 2015 no es esperable, y una de las mayores causas ha sido el decrecimiento permanente en las políticas agrícolas y el desarrollo rural”, dijo Uma Lele, del Banco Mundial. Durante la primera mitad del Siglo XX hubo mejoras de la agricultura sin precedentes en la Historia, señala Juñes Pretty, otro de los autores del informe preliminar, profesor de Sociedad Y Medioambiente del Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas de la Universidad de Essex, de Gran Bretaña. “Pero algunos de estos beneficios fueron disemnados de manera dispar, y hay grandes problemas a la vuelta de la esquina: el cambio climático, la crisis energética, la incertidumbre económica, el crecimiento de la población, la degradación medioambiental, y un cambio en los patrones de consumo de las economías emergentes, que están siguiendo los mismos modelos no sustentables que en Occidente”, expresó el británico. – MR – 26/03/2010. Fuente: Nova http://www.rosarionet.com.ar/rnet/opinion/notas.vsp?nid=49178

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Global summit seeks to transform agricultural research Yojana Sharma 25 March 2010 | EN An unprecedented mix of agriculture ministers, farmers, heads of international organisations, civil society groups, community development organisations and private sector innovators will meet in Montpellier in France from this Sunday (28 March) to discuss a new roadmap for international agricultural research. The first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) (28–31 March), organised by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, will aim to draw up an action plan and strategy for improving agricultural research in order to make maximum impact on development, especially of the poor. The meeting, which involves the world's 20 leading economies, also aims to set up a monitoring system to track commitments and whether agricultural research is leading to progress in alleviating poverty. The meeting occurs during a time of "urgency and common purpose", said Jules Pretty, professor of environment and society at Essex University in the UK. "There are big problems around the corner: climate change, the energy crunch, economic uncertainty, population growth, environmental degradation and a shift in consumption patterns in emerging economies that are following the unsustainable models found in the West," he said. "At this meeting we hope to set the global research agenda for agriculture," said Mahmoud Solh, director-general of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), based in Syria. The meeting was the idea of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries, which is now expanding into the Group of Twenty (G20) major economies, including countries that are also aid recipients such as Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa. This could provide opportunities for these countries to influence western donors and steer policy on agricultural research in new directions. "The main advantage of these countries being among the leadership is that they know the problems better than anyone else," said Uma Lele, former senior advisor at the World Bank and lead author of a pivotal report, Transforming Agricultural Research for Development, which will be presented at the meeting. Developing countries, particularly those now participating in the G20, have the energy, talent, advanced science and indigenous know-how to make agricultural research more responsive to development needs, she believes. Extensive regional consultations that took place in the lead-up to GCARD will bring some of their views to the fore. "The consultations were in themselves quite novel," said Lele, with many non-traditional voices being heard for the first time in a high-level international forum.

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Much attention in the run-up to GCARD has focused on the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a group of funders that sponsors 15 research institutes around the world, and which is collaborating with the meeting organisers. CGIAR is restructuring into a consortium that aims to handle larger programmes that can respond to development needs — discussions about eight major agricultural themes in the new structure will continue at GCARD. But CGIAR's activities amount to just 4–5 per cent of total global public sector spending on agricultural research, according to Transforming Agricultural Research for Development. "GCARD is intended to leverage the remaining 95 per cent," Lele said. At Montpellier, the organisers are hoping that developing countries will commit to investing more in their own agriculture research and systems, partly because donor countries have been making promises and not delivering, Lele noted. "There are countries with strong national programmes such as India, China, Brazil and Argentina that can play a role beyond their borders," added Solh. China has about 50,000 agricultural scientists, India 26,000, and Brazil 7–8,000, according to the report. Brazil's agriculture research budget is US$2 billion — twice the budget of the CGIAR as a whole — and Chinese agricultural aid programmes in Africa are larger than those of some western countries, the report found. Link to Transforming Agricultural Research for Development http://www.scidev.net/en/news/global-summit-seeks-to-transform-agricultural-research.html

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'Historic' agricultural conference wraps up with roadmap

Naomi Antony 1 April 2010 | EN [MONTPELLIER] The world's largest stakeholder conference on agricultural research finished yesterday (1 April) with a set of guiding principles for the future. Monty Jones, incoming chair of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR) — one of the organisers of GCARD — said that the meeting marked a historic moment because it brought together more than 1,000 stakeholders to develop a new vision for agricultural research for development. "I think it's the first time we've had this kind of collective input," he told a media briefing. Even proposed reforms for international agricultural research centres were "filtering down to national programmes for their effective participation. We go back very happy, very glad that the first GCARD has been a big success." But some delegates from the non-governmental organisations community were sceptical about the extent to which stakeholders will be involved in the process. "What is the real role of development partners? They are not really partners at all — they are there to disseminate your products but they are not involved in all stages of your research and development," said Neth Daño, a programme manager for the ETC Group in the Philippines. "From the first day [of the conference] we've been saying business as usual is not acceptable but this all looks like business as usual to me," she added. "Our presence here should not be seen as an automatic endorsement of all the outcomes of the [GCARD] conference," said Assetou Kanoute, of the Association for Development of Production and Training Activities in Mali, speaking on behalf of more than 40 NGOs present at the conference. "Making a new era of agricultural research a reality requires a new paradigm with poor farmers and food providers at the centre of what we do." One of GCARD's tangible results is a roadmap for how better to tailor agricultural research to the needs of the rural poor. It highlights the need for implementation of regional priorities, identified through regional consultations. It also says that characteristics of a well-functioning agricultural research for development system include: "increasing mutual and equal accountability among all stakeholders" and "strengthening key relationships among research, development (extension, seed suppliers, the banking sector) and farmer[s]". The document will be further refined in the next 2–3 months. But the roadmap is not a formal declaration, nor is it binding. "Agriculture is very complex and location-specific," Mark Holderness, executive officer of GFAR, told SciDev.Net. "Previous definite processes have alienated people."

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"The roadmap essentially says 'here are common principles that you now ought to take up and think about and look at how the system is functioning'," he added. "We welcome opportunities to engage constructively and contribute our expertise to future deliberations," said Kanoute. http://scidev.net/en/news/-historic-agricultural-conference-wraps-up-with-roadmap-.html

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Agricultural mega-programmes 'will not attract funding' 30 March 2010 Naomi Antony and Sian Lewis [MONTPELLIER, FRANCE] A proposed set of 'mega-programmes' aimed at transforming agricultural research has come under fire by key donors for being vague and unlikely to change the status quo. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a network of governments and organisations that funds 15 major research centres around the world, has drawn up eight thematic mega-programmes as part of radical reforms aimed at unifying the centres to attract more funding. The reforms are highly significant because they will help dictate the world's priorities for agricultural research for a decade or more. But this week, leading agricultural figures from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank criticised the programmes, which bear provisional titles such as "agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable" and "water, soils and ecosystems". "I'd like to see CGIAR rise above their immediate concerns of maintaining current research portfolios to think about the dozen or so major, problem-driven, results-oriented outputs that will create transformational change," Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of agricultural policy and statistics at the Gates Foundation, told the Global Conference for Agricultural Research Development (GCARD) (28—31 March). "The current thematic programmes are not the place to start." Pingali said the CGIAR system must be able to attract donors by putting forward a credible plan of results-oriented research. "Will the current draft mega-programmes do that? I realise this is still early times and work in progress. But if I look at the eight, 'magic' mega-programmes, they are broad themes. They don't show what exactly will be done. "Because they are so fuzzy they are not likely to generate enthusiasm for increased funding." Juergen Voegele, director of the World Bank's department for Agriculture and Rural Development, also demanded more clarity. "We would like to see [just] two concrete mega-programmes because I don't believe that we will get beyond the rhetoric otherwise." He warned that the proposals must be sufficiently detailed to attract funding. But Katherine Sierra, chair of the CGIAR fund council, assured SciDev.Net that donors are behind the concept of rooting the reform in an ambitious strategic framework. "What I think you heard was an urgency to fast-track [the programmes] so we can start showing concrete results. "We agree that it will build confidence if we have a few programmes ready to go — to demonstrate to the world this is what change looks like."

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Colin Chartres, director of the International Water Management Institute, a CGIAR centre based in Sri Lanka, said he was confident that CGIAR could get some mega-programmes up and running by the beginning of 2011. But he said that getting people to work together on programmes that need a high degree of integration will be a much bigger challenge. "We can't put one up if it's not right — that's a backward step. Some will need a lot of thought. If we're clever we'll take two simple ones first and spend a little more time developing the more complex ones." Hartmann, director-general of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, another CGIAR centre, said it would be more effective to have four mega-programmes based on regions rather than topic areas: tropical Americas, tropical Africa, tropical Asia and arid lands. "Let those regions — not scientists, not centres, not donors — determine their priorities. Those are the four regions that the CGIAR has always accepted. That's how we work." He said that there would then be smaller programmes based on these regional needs. http://www.scidev.net/en/news/agricultural-mega-programmes-will-not-attract-funding-.html

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Turn peasant farmers into entrepreneurs, conference hears Naomi Antony 29 March 2010 | EN Maize_Farmer_Rwanda_Flickr_CIAT_by_Neil_Palmer.jpg 2 Small-scale farmers must be more entrepreneurial to ensure food security in their local communities Flickr/CIAT by Neil Palmer [MONTPELLIER, FRANCE] Smallholder farmers must become more entrepreneurial if food security is to be achieved, a key meeting on agricultural research heard yesterday (28 March). Commercialisation of agriculture is not just about large international markets but also about vibrant and competitive local markets, according to Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and former director-general of the Africa Rice Center. "Farming — irrespective of size and scale — must be considered as business," he told the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development in Montpellier, France (see Global summit seeks to transform agricultural research). "We must think of the commercialisation of agriculture not just as the large commercial farms that feed the European Union and the United States but transforming smallholder farmers into commercial, local entrepreneurs that feed local demand. That is where you must stem cheap food coming into the country." The key to creating such local markets is government investment in rural development to provide roads and storage facilities, he said. "Why is China such a success story?" he asked. "Because it continues to invest in rural development and in creating a demand for local markets." There are 500 million small farms worldwide, Nwanze added. Eighty-five per cent of them occupy fewer than two hectares — in Africa and Asia they often take up less than half a hectare. Yet these millions of small-scale farmers control 20 per cent of the global food trade. "How can you talk about transforming and solving food security without investing in small farmers and making them competitive in their own environments?" he asked. "When farmers begin to make money, they start to invest, and that's when they begin to use your technologies and want to buy fertiliser and improve their small irrigation schemes." "We must help them demand [the] new technologies that we produce and can only do that by creating a local domestic market incentive," he said.

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Gebisa Ejeta, 2009 World Food Prize winner and a professor at Purdue University, United States, told SciDev.Net: "I think farmers [are] already entrepreneurs. There are not really many farmers who just produce for home use." But to make them effective entrepreneurs, Ejeta said, governments need to build an appetite for science and technology, particularly science and technology that will lead to "... increased production or unique products that would potentially have economic value" . Ejeta added that policymakers should have respect for science and the role it plays as a vehicle of change. They should also appreciate the importance of making connections between the new technology and users of that technology. And the best way to link technology with its users — in this case, farmers — is to create opportunity at the end for farmers (see SciDev.Net's blog post Three's company?). http://www.scidev.net/en/news/turn-peasant-farmers-into-entrepreneurs-conference-hears-1.html

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This week SciDev.Net is publishing several articles on its own GCARD conference blog that set the scene for GCARD. For access to the complete series, go to: http://scidevnet.wordpress.com/category/gcard-2010-agricultural-research-for-development/. The road ahead March 31, 2010 So it’s over. The first GCARD conference closed on a high, with hopes for a new era of agricultural research for development – and a ‘roadmap’ to guide the way. Walking to the train station, I thought about how the weather had paralleled the tone of the conference. Day one (sunshine) started with optimism, tensions mounted on day two (grey and gloomy) when delegates felt they weren’t having enough of a say, frustrations came to the fore on day three (rain) when they got to air their concerns – and today was bright once again. But it’s not all sunshine and roses. Amidst the celebrations of a conference generally considered a success, there were pertinent reminders that the work begins here. Kathy Sierra, chair of the CGIAR fund council, urged the conference to get going sooner rather than later. “We need to move ahead and focus on results. Without that, the collaboration and communication will fade.” GCARD global author Uma Lele echoed the urgency, with her simple but memorable mantra: “Action, action, action.” And let’s not forget about investment. No matter how much you fine-tune research to the needs of the poor and get them involved, nothing can happen without funds. Incoming GFAR chair Monty Jones warned the conference “I will be seeking your money”, to peals of laughter. He was smiling. But he wasn’t joking. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net GCARD soundbites: day 4 March 31, 2010 The final day of GCARD was a lively one, with promises of concrete change coupled with sober reminders of the task that lies ahead. We heard from a range of stakeholders, all of them united by their desire to do things differently – and put this desire into action. Here’s day 4 in quotes: “A number of barriers have prevented us from realising agricultural research for development’s potential.” Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general “Are we concentrating [our] efforts on the right crops and regions?” Participants from the thematic area 8 discussion

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”We should be … ashamed that we haven’t reduced hunger and poverty in the world.” Monty Jones, incoming GFAR chair “Gender is non-negotiable.” Mary Njenga, Kenyan researcher “[The process] ‘I research – you transfer – they adopt’ is no longer applicable.” Brazilian delegate “Put some lights and targets on the map which will indicate the road.” Participants from the ‘Thinking forward’ session “When it comes to a tough job, they turn to a woman.” Uma Lele, GCARD global author “The role of partnerships has been highlighted in a way it hasn’t been before.” Carlos Perez del Castillo, chair of CGIAR’s Consortium Board “One third of the human race are smallholder farmers.” Kathy Sierra, chair of CGIAR fund council “We are starting a new era of agricultural research for development and all of you need to own it.” Adel El-Beltagy, outgoing GFAR chair “Action, action, action!” Uma Lele Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net Are you listening, CGIAR? March 31, 2010 Carlos Pérez del Castillo and the rest of the CGIAR must ensure stakeholders' suggestions are genuinely incorporated into the modified thematic areas. Credit: GCARD Listening to the feedback from yesterday’s parallel sessions, I was inspired by the delegates’ genuine passion to bring about change. All the usual suspects made an appearance. As Kevin Cleaver of the International Fund for Agricultural Development put it on day two: “There’s not a lot that’s new here in concept – what may be new is that we do it this time.” Delegates called for research and decision-making to be bottom up, conducted for the poor with the poor. “Think local” was the overall consensus, with a reminder to the CGIAR that they need to start from the user – not the product. Capacity strengthening must be invested in early on, delegates reminded us. “Build individual and institutional capacity strengthening from [the] beginning, across all partners and beneficiary groups,” they said. Partnerships, though “not a pancaea or cure-all”, were also considered of great importance. But not just any partnerships – ones where the participants set the agenda. The concern that non-food security crops are being neglected (see Are the crop world’s “big three” stealing the show?) was presented. Their place within the reforms was not discussed, and I will be interested to see how – or rather, whether – the CGIAR addresses this.

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Participants also wanted the broader context of agricultural research systems – how it fits in with other sectors, for example – to be taken into consideration, as well as detailed impact pathways that link research outputs to development outcomes. I could go on, but it would require several more posts. Monty Jones, incoming GFAR chair, assured us that the feedback would be incorporated. “Fine-tuning means bringing together the key partners again. We don’t want the situation where we lock ourselves in a room and make a final decision. At every stage let’s get the key partners involved.” Provided this includes the poor, that sounds like a promising start to me. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net A bull named Research March 30, 2010 Hands up who views farmers as scientists? Despite our best efforts, most of us still associate ’science’ with white coats, labs and passive, labyrinthine prose. And yet some farmers practice science. They develop experimental and observational techniques. So said Louise Fortmann – a rural sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley – at the GCARD session ‘Open science’, which sought to showcase how agricultural and wider science can impact development. “[Farmers] learn about soils by working with the same soils year after year,” said Fortmann. “They are civil scientists.” Whether or not you agree with her, it was one of the few times – from my perspective at least – a speaker had sincerely placed farmers on an equal footing with researchers. Shame then, that the hall was so empty – this was what “experts” and participants alike needed to hear instead of rhetorical posturing. “We need to get out of the lab, off the research station and into the field, and start talking to farmers in their own language,” Fortmann said. “I hope we can dispense with the silly and dangerous dichotomy between science and development.” She made a plea to researchers. “[You] need to be humble and collaborate with local experts, treating them not as data sources but as colleagues with whom new research and knowledge will be created.” Fortmann told the charming story of Mama Esther Mudoma, an African farmer who worked with CIAT scientist Robin Buruchara to develop a variety of bean resistant to root rot. Mudoma bought a bull with the money she made from selling the beans to neighbouring villages, and named him Research. “Why Research?” Buruchara asked. “You came here, we did research together.” Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net Mega-programme whistle-stop tour March 30, 2010

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GCARD (credit: GCARD) The CGIAR presented a draft version of its long-awaited mega-programmes, or thematic areas of work (TAWs) as they’re now being called, to GCARD this morning. There are 8 TAWs and 3 ‘cross-cutting platforms’ that will be integral to all programmes—but the final numbers of both these may change. TAW1: Agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable This will focus on ‘poverty hotspots’, looking at sustainable agriculture and food security, among other things. TAW1 is expected to improve the lives of more than 250 million poor people, with production increases of at least 10% over 10 years. TAW2: Enabling agricultural incomes for the poor The policies, institutions and markets required to boost rural incomes. TAW2 is expected to reduce the cost of taking goods to market by at least 20%. TAW3: Sustainable crop increases for global food security This will research options for increasing productivity of the three main cereal crops including identifying genes, accelerating the development of new varieties, improving crop management and supporting pro-poor policies. CGIAR estimates it will affect three billion people. Gender is one of the cross-cutting platforms (credit: USAID) TAW4: Agriculture, nutrition and health This is expected to reduce malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and foodborne disease. TAW5: Water, soils and ecosystems This is expected to improve access to water for productive purposes for 200 million people within 20 years; boost ecosystem resilience and reverse trends of water degradation. TAW6: Forests and trees This includes objectives such as harnessing forest ecosystem services for the poor. TAW6 should help reduce deforestation by 10% by 2030; reduce carbon emissions and increase the planting of tree genetic resources on 50,000 square kilometres of agricultural and degraded lands by 2030. TAW7: Climate change and agriculture This is expected to produce science-based vulnerability assessments and lead to better national and global policies for accessing and using adaptation and mitigation technologies. TAW8: Mobilising agricultural biodiversity for food security and resilience Research will include creating a broader range of tools in molecular characterisation and boosting the use of genetic diversity, among others. TAW8 is expected to increase agricultural productivity, broaden the coverage of gene collections and safeguard biodiversity. CGIAR is also proposing three ‘cross-cutting platforms’ in:

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1. gender in agriculture 2. capacity strengthening to promote learning and knowledge sharing; and 3. Strategic planning and intelligence Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Communication counts March 30, 2010 My editor, David Dickson, has previously highlighted the importance of effectively communicating the value of biodiversity to policymakers and the public (see Biodiversity loss matters and communication is crucial). It seems like the world of agricultural biodiversity has cottoned on to the fact too. Delegates at the agricultural biodiversity GCARD session this morning stressed the importance of good advocacy and communication in influencing policy and convincing politicians and society that genetic resources and biodiversity are something worth saving. delegates at agricultural biodiversity session (credit: GCARD) Helga Rodriguez, a coffee grower in Costa Rica, said we need to increase this kind of awareness among all sectors of society. In some instances this includes small farmers. Emile Frison, director general of Biodiversity International, said that most small farmers are well aware of the need to protect agricultural biodiversity. But, according to one delegate from Morocco, the same is not true when it comes to protecting wild species. “At the end of the day,” said one CGIAR stakeholder, “we need a value proposition for farmers”. But, according to Priscilla Henriquez from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation, the priority should be creating a strategy to reach the more influential policymakers. “We need a strategy to talk to the politicians in charge of allocating money to genebanks,” she said. “We must talk their language,” she added. Henriquez explained that this essentially means talking about genetic resources in terms of the issues that they care about—food security, nutrition, climate change and health. I, for one, couldn’t agree more—science communication for development is, after all, what SciDev.Net is all about. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net GCARD soundbites: day 3 March 30, 2010 GCARD delegates had been eagerly anticipating today – (almost) nothing but parallel sessions, providing plenty of opportunities to vent frustrations, share ideas, and help shape the CGIAR reforms. If you had something to say, day 3 was your chance. Here’s a small selection of soundbites to give you an idea of what went on: Heard during the CGIAR plenary:

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“Change must happen in a way that involves everyone.” Carlos Perez del Castillo, Chair, CGIAR Consortium Board Heard during the parallel discussions: “[The CGIAR reforms] will be an evolving story, nothing is cut in stone.” Marianne Banziger, CIMMYT “We grow rain-fed crops. If it doesn’t rain, there will be hunger.” Lydia Sasu, Farmers Organisation Network, Ghana “We will not make a top-down plan, we are not intending to be arrogant.” Marianne Banziger, CIMMYT “Is this a mega-programme or a giga-programme? If you try to include every aspect [of biodiversity into this mega-programme] it will turn into a giga-programme and you’ll giga nowhere.” Participant in biodiversity session “What’s new here? From the first day [of GCARD] we’ve been saying business as usual is not acceptable. But it looks all like business as usual to me.” Neth Daño, etc group, Philippines “We need to stop talking about linking to farmers and start talking about involving farmers.” Kwesi Atta-Krah, Deputy Director General, Biodiversity International Heard during the ‘Open science’ session: “I hope we can dispense with the silly and dangerous dichotomy between science and development.” Louise Fortmann, researcher, University of California, Berkley Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net The donors’ take on mega-programmes March 30, 2010 Donors speaking at GCARD have already expressed some concerns about CGIAR’s proposed mega-programmes (see Agricultural mega-programmes ‘will not attract funding’). Kathy Sierra (credit: GCARD) Yesterday afternoon, Kathy Sierra, chair of the CGIAR Fund Council and vice president of the sustainable development network at the World Bank, talked to SciDev.Net about donors’ expectations. Are donors really against the CGIAR reform? No. All the donors back the idea of creating ambitious, challenging and results-oriented programmes—what some people are calling the mega-programmes. But let’s not make ‘the perfect’ the enemy of the good. There is some feeling within the CGIAR centres that we can’t move forward until all the mega-programmes are ready. They want to make sure they have a suite of programmes that are coherent and aligned. We’d like that too – in the medium-term. But we really want to see action now. Why not pick 2-3 programmes that are ready and present them to us so we can get moving? Why the urgency?

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The people that we’re serving would like now to see some investment and the donors would like to invest. But we can’t invest until we have some programmes there. We want to see some early mega-programmes so they can show the way and so that we can start showing concrete results. We believe strongly that it will build confidence if we have a few programmes ready to go and approve to demonstrate to world that this is what change looks like. We’ve been clear about the fact that we’re looking for fast-start action. The centes and consortium are fully capable of doing that. What would you like the new mega-programmes to look like? What we want are big, ambitious programmes that will change the lives of people. Exactly what that means, is up to the CGIAR consortium. We will probably have a mixed portfolio made up of some vertical programmes around, for example, key crops such as rice or cereals, and another set of programmes that are cross-cutting, for example around a landscape such as drylands. Some things are important: we want partnership. Irrespective of how you cut the pie, we want the process to be open—we want to know who the centres are collaborating with, how they’ve listened to partners, and where they’re handing over to local research actors. And there are a few topic areas too, such as gender or climate change, that we think are critical for development and hope to see embedded in all the programmes. At the end of the day, the mega-programmes have to be meaningful to the ultimate beneficiaries, have to open the system up and have to involve other partners. If they do they will gain the support not just of donors but other stakeholders in the system. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Are the crop world’s “big three” stealing the show? March 30, 2010 Star attraction: Delegates are concerned the three food security crops are leaving crops like cassava in the shade Are key crops such as cassava and sorghum being neglected in favour of the “big three” (rice, wheat and maize)? The CGIAR’s thematic area (formerly known as mega-programme) three, ‘Optimising productivity of global food security crops’, generated some engaging dialogue about whether the organisation is prioritising the right crops. “Why are we ignoring sorghum, barley, millet and legumes?” APAARI’s Raj Paroda wanted to know. Lydia Sasu of the Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana agreed. “We don’t eat maize in my area!” she exclaimed, to nods of approval. “I would be very grateful if you could consider other crops.” Marianne Banziger – deputy director general, Research and Partnership, at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, CIMMYT, – assured delegates that the CGIAR was not suggesting these were the only important crops, reminding them that this is just one area and that the crops being put forward would be addressed in other programmes. But she admitted: “It has not been covered adequately where [within the thematic areas] other crops will be taken care of”.

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It was a long time before the issue was put to rest. “If I don’t see cassava, if I don’t see plantain, it would be hard for me to support the CGIAR,” warned a delegate from the African Development Bank. And a delegate from Gabon said: “We need strong programmes for other crops in order to really address the food security of those people who depend on these crops.” Feedback from all eight sessions will be presented tomorrow. I look forward to seeing whether the “ignored” crops have managed to find a home in the CGIAR’s reforms. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net A turn for the better March 30, 2010 In Montpellier, blue skies have given way to grey drizzle, but inside the Corum Centre, GCARD has taken a turn for the better. If this morning’s session on agricultural biodiversity is anything to go by, concerns that farmers are not being given a chance to contribute will be yesterday’s news. “I’ve been trying to interact since yesterday and today I got the opportunity to do so”, said one Indian delegate. The session saw lively discussion (credit:GCARD) The session saw some lively discussion from farmers, nongovernmental organisations, researchers and policymakers, among others, on what the CGIAR’s agricultural biodiversity mega-programme should look like. The session was led by Kwesi Atta-Krah, deputy director general of Biodiversity International. A key message from the delegates was well summarised by Atta-Krah: “We need to stop talking about linking to farmers and start talking about involving farmers”. This means ensuring that farmers take part in every step of the research process—from setting research agendas to monitoring the effectiveness of their results. The same is true for CGIAR’s development partners. “What is the real role of development partners? They are not really partners—they are there to disseminate your products but they are not involved in all stages of research and development”, said Neth Daño, programme manager for the etc group in the Philippines. Atta-Krah threw the question back on the delegates, inviting concrete proposals for addressing the issue. A myriad of suggestions emerged, from creating advisory panels to getting involved in private extension services to setting up virtual consulting centres. One coffee-grower from Costa Rica suggested simply sending researchers out to get their hands dirty alongside farmers. “By the end of one day they will know what the problems are”. Atta-Krah seemed dedicated to using the session to get a list of concrete actions to feed in to the agricultural biodiversity mega-programme. What happens beyond that remains to be seen. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net

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The ‘f’ in GCARD March 30, 2010 GCARD, the acronym, may not have the letter ‘f’ in it but GCARD the conference is certainly meant to—f for farmer. The meeting has, without doubt, heard a plethora of high-level speakers emphasise the need for agricultural research for development to embrace a participatory approach where farmers — among other non-research stakeholders — articulate their needs and help set research agendas. To do so, they must be given a platform to speak. GCARD was meant to be that platform but by the end of day two, delegates were unconvinced that it is fit for purpose. On Sunday, we sat through a day of well-meaning rhetoric marked by an absence of farmers’ voices. It wasn’t until lunchtime yesterday that the meeting was opened up to questions from the floor and by then tensions were running high. (credit: GCARD) One delegate from Peru said “you must listen to farmers”—a sentiment echoed by almost all of the comments. Others were concerned with the number of farmers at the conference. A female farmer from India said “equal partnership is dependent on equal representation”. Outside the conference rooms themselves, delegates were also expressing their frustration. The GCARD blog quotes two participants involved in the GCARD regional consultations saying “We would have preferred … a longer discussion with the audience. “ To be fair, Sunday was always billed as a high-level summit meeting and it is today, through parallel break-out sessions, where farmers and other stakeholders’ contributions are meant to come to the fore. Let’s hope they manage to do just that. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Why isn’t agriculture a public good? March 29, 2010 Policymakers must ensure people are fed now to avoid health problems later Surely it is, I hear you cry. No it isn’t, according to AGRA president Namanga Ngongi. “Policymakers will tell you agriculture is a private sector affair and should not be supported by the government. But we don’t say that about other areas like health and education, ” he told a media briefing. “Everybody needs to eat,” Ngongi said, looking as shocked as the rest of us that such common sense has seemingly eluded policymakers. “To meet MDG1 [Millennium Development Goal 1], policies must change,” he warned. “In my view there is no reason why food and nutrition security shouldn’t be considered a public good. Everyone needs to be in good nutritional shape – just like everyone needs an education and needs to be healthy.”

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Ngongi is rightly bemused that health is considered a public good when nutrition – critical to good health – isn’t. Hartmann, director of the IITA, appeared equally puzzled by the flawed logic. “How could we not know agriculture is a frontline of health? If we start early on by ensuring good nutrition, we’ll do a lot for health in general. We have spent so much money fixing things at the end whereas with the same money we could have invested in nutrition and solved a lot of problems.” Ngongi said: “If the international community prioritises agriculture in the same way it prioritises education and health, then policies will start to change.” Currently, most developing countries are not held to an international standard for food and nutritional security. He highlighted countries such as Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania, where the situation started to change when leaders declared food security as a priority. It’s time for the rest of the continent to follow suit. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net Seeds for change March 29, 2010 In a media briefing at GCARD this afternoon, three agricultural development experts identified seed production as a vital step in achieving Africa’s Green Revolution. “The thirst for seed [in Africa] is increasing,” said Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Africa needs 500,000 tonnes of seeds, among other things, before it can achieve a Green Revolution—it’s approaching 100 tonnes, added World Food Prize winner Monty Jones. How to fill the gap? Ngongi suggested the key lies in supporting small seed companies within national systems. In response to a question from the floor, Ngongi admitted that large agrobusinesses such as Monsanto certainly have a role to play. But, he said, such companies are mostly involved in producing hybrid seeds for a limited range of crops. In Africa, this predominantly translates into seeds for maize, supplied out of South Africa. “The problem,” explained Ngongi, “is that these seeds are not really adapted to local agro-ecologies in most countries”. So, despite large scales of production, big businesses don’t really have an advantage, particularly when it comes to smallholder agriculture, he added. He suggested that AGRA’s approach—to support seed produced by national systems, tailored to particular contexts, and distributed by small seed companies, community organisations and farmers—was a more effective way of shoring up seed stocks. This is particularly true for self-pollinating crops such as cassava that hold no interest to big seed companies because they have little to no prospect of profit after the first year, said Ngongi. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net

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Seeing is believing March 29, 2010 (credit: Flickr/World Bank/Curt Carnemark) There’s a mantra among fundraisers that ‘seeing is believing’—show people how their money will make a difference and they’ll be more likely to part with it. Certainly many donors supporting science for development are increasingly asking the recipients of their grants for case studies to demonstrate their impact. The world of agricultural research is no exception, as we heard at GCARD yesterday, when several donors called on CGIAR to ‘fast-track’ some of their proposed mega-programmes, partly to build case studies that illustrate their worth. Today, Kathy Sierra, chair of the CGIAR fund council, told SciDev.Net “it will build confidence if we have a few programmes ready to go and approved to demonstrate to world that this is what change looks like”. At a press briefing this morning, the head of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Hartmann, illustrated just how powerful a success story can be. His organisation has been working with Nigerian leaders to improve agriculture. “Within four years, we had boosted the country’s staple crop by 10 million tonnes—with no price drops and the added environmental benefit of taking 800,000 hectares out of production”, said Hartmann. The project reached 80 million people, he added. After that success, policies within Nigeria changed. “People who had never before thought about investing in agriculture starting coming to us and saying ‘what can we do?’ ” ‘You can invest in agribusiness,’ was Hartmann’s reply. And they have. “In just four years mindsets were changed,” says Hartmann. There’s a lesson in here—not only for the CGIAR as they thrash out the details of their mega-programmes, but for all of us concerned with bringing more funding to bear on science for development. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net GCARD soundbites: day 2 March 29, 2010 We’re more than halfway through the conference already. Will a concrete roadmap be decided on? Will farmers get a fair deal? Will speakers ever stop saying “We can’t do business as usual”? In the meantime, here are some soundbites from the various sessions during day 2: Heard at the regional presentations: “What about roots and tubers, what about plantains? CGIAR priorities must line up with [Africa's].” Uzo Mokwunye, FARA “[AR4D] can liberate India from hunger and bridge the widening income divide between farmers and non-farmers.” Raj Paroda, APAARI Heard at a media briefing for Africa’s green revolution:

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“If you look at the successes we lazily call Asia, they’re really focused on specific countries … it was country leadership that made the difference” Hartmann, director of IITA “Let’s … get the fertilisers down to the farm gate.” Monty Jones, incoming GFAR chair “In my view there is no reason why [agriculture] must not be considered a public good. Everyone needs to eat, everyone needs to be in nutritional good shape.” Namanga Ngongi, president of AGRA “How can we not know that agriculture is a frontline of health?” Hartmann “Africa needs more investment but not the kind that puts people out of work and farmers out of their lands.” Ngongi And elsewhere … “We have no recipe, no cookbooks, no spices – the roadmap is meant to be a menu of options.” Uma Lele, GCARD global author “Money is used in the name of farmers so they should be the ones to say whether the research is good or not.” Raul Montemayor, Federation of Free Farmers, Phillipines “There’s not a lot that’s new here in concept but what may be new is that we do it this time.” Kevin Cleaver, International Fund for Agricultural Development Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net What it’s all about March 29, 2010 Jones urged participants to invest in the future of agricultural research Credit: GCARD Monty Jones, incoming chair of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, kicked off day two of GCARD by reminding us why we’re here. “This [conference] is a major milestone in the evolution of agricultural research for development … We should contribute to shaping the future of ARD in a significant way.” Jones said that he had seen the “usual networking and agenda setting” taking place and urged us to make sure that it doesn’t stop in Montpellier but, rather, marks the beginning of a long process. Research remains a key tool for increasing agricultural productivity, he said, but its impact has not been adequate. He highlighted some of the reasons for this: underinvestment in research and capacity development, for which declarations remain unfulfilled; inadequate integration; failing to place agricultural research within the wider context of rural development; and underexploited opportunities for North-South and South-South collaboration. “GCARD must map out solutions and actions to these – addressing constraints and exploiting opportunities.” Jones outlined four ways forward for GCARD: 1) Establish research – and GCARD – as an inclusive process

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2) Validate the CGIAR mega-programmes by national and regional stakeholders, and an understanding of how partners will work together 3) Make use of networking and learning opportunities 4) The development of a roadmap to reform and reorient agricultural research for development for meeting the needs of the poor It’s tempting to view all of the above in a “heard it all before” manner – surely we know that research needs to be harnessed so that it actually benefits the ones we’re doing the research for? But if it was that simple, we wouldn’t be here. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net Dissent in the ranks March 29, 2010 Day 2 at GCARD and the CGIAR reform is still hot on everyone’s lips. A small blue pamphlet laid out in the press room today may look boring, but its content is far from it. It contains the results of an informal survey of 13 large funders and more than 16 CGIAR centre chairs, director generals and deputy director generals, and suggests that these key stakeholders perceive the CGIAR to be failing in every one of its six ‘reform guiding goals’. The survey was conducted informally by Hartmann, head of the International Insitute for Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria and vocal critic of the CGIAR reform (see CGIAR reforms make research decision-making distant). It asked ‘funders’ and ‘doers’ to rank, from 1 to 5, how well the CGIAR reforms have achieved goals such as increased outcome and impact, simplicity, clarity, decentralised decision-making and subsidiarity. The CGIAR failed to score above the ‘pass’ mark of 2.5 in any goal, although several respondents felt it was too early to assess some goals—most notably, those associated with impact, effectiveness and subsidiarity. Hartmann includes some lively comments from respondents: “The goals are too blah and self delusory—they do not allow choices to be made. We need clear principles and measurable criteria to differentiate options and quantify/qualify progress”, T. Simons. He also includes some personal recommendations for the reform process, such as considering mega-programmes based on commodities or regions (rather than global) and streamlining administration requirements. Hartmann said he is disseminating his pamphlet to GCARD delegates and using it to show that not all members of the CGIAR are happy. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Number crunch March 29, 2010

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Today, the GCARD Global Author Team, led by Uma Lele, will present their flagship report Transforming agricultural research for development. They were charged with creating a report that “sets out the partnerships, mechanisms, innovative pathways and investments needed to translate the products of agricultural research into larger and quicker development impacts”. What did they find? Here are some of the key numbers highlighted in the report. 1 billion people worldwide still lack basic food security. 95-97% of the food insecure and poor live in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 150 million hectares worldwide could potentially be brought into agriculture. 7-20 years is how long it takes for agricultural research to impact in the field. 90% of agricultural research for development in the developing world is funded through public money. US$16.4 billion funding for public agricultural research and development for developing countries is needed by 2025, according to the CGIAR strategic results framework (up from current US$5.1 billion) US$20 billion was pledged by G8 for agriculture (including agricultural research) from 2009-2011 53% of developing countries’ public agricultural research and development undertaken in just five nations (China, India, Brazil, Thailand and South Africa). US$1 billion was put into the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) 2009 budget—nearly twice all that year’s funding for the CGIAR. 1.5% is the recommended proportion of agricultural GDP that developing countries must commit to R&D. 4-5% of total public expenditure on agricultural research worldwide is represented by the CGIAR. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net CGIAR reforms take centre stage March 28, 2010 The radical reforms of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) — which include a new strategy and results framework, and a new set of eight mega-programmes— are already taking centre stage at the conference. Development expert Gordon Conway quizzed the chair of the new CGIAR consortium, Carlos Perez del Castillo, alluding to dissent among the CGIAR centres. Conway quizzes del Castillo (credit: GCARD) “I know through the grapevine that not all the centres are 100% happy [with the reforms],” he said. Indeed, the head of CGIAR-sponsored International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Hartmann, has already published his concerns (see CGIAR reforms make research decision-making distant). “Of course, reform is not an easy task,” replied Castillo.

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But there is some good news, he said. There is a consensus that international agricultural research needs reform; that this research must be results-oriented and that “partnerships are essential”. And five of the 15 CGIAR centres have already signed up to the consortium. But there will obviously be difficulties, said del Castillo. As far as the CGIAR centres go, some see the reforms as a departure from how they currently (successfully) operate. “We need to build trust and confidence that they will … be better off.” Regarding donors, while they talk about harmonisation, many still want to support ‘pet projects’. “I hope that we will be able to get the donors on board, speaking with one voice, and with less restrictive funds than we have at the moment.” And as for CGIAR partners: “We must recognise that national institutions can do some things much better than us”. But partners must also recognise that, as part of the mega-programmes, they will have access to more funding, he added. He said what CGIAR has brought to GCARD is very much a ‘work in progress’ and he appealed to all participants to make their views and concerns heard. If the informal talk among delegates is anything to go by, he’s unlikely to have any shortage of comment. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Doing it for themselves March 28, 2010 Stop focusing on what the international community is doing and start building capacity. That was one of the messages to the developing world during the first day of GCARD, one I found particularly interesting given that the finger is more often pointed at the rich for failing to keep promises and not doing enough. While acknowledging that donors’ funding commitments have certainly been questionable, participants said that this was no excuse to sit back. They called for developing countries to assume responsibility for their own agricultural development. Uma Lele and Eduardo Trigo, who co-authored the GCARD report ‘Transforming agricultural research for development’ (see Global summit seeks to transform agricultural research), said developing country policymakers must pursue long-term investment in capacity building to avoid “messy” scenarios in the future. And Kanayo Nwanze, director-general of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, admonished the developing world for being too focused on what the international community is doing to help them. He cited a lack of political will as one of the key reasons investment in agricultural research is lagging, and called for developing countries to lead the process of change. “Change cannot come from outside – it is an intrinsic process that comes from inside.” World Food Prize winner Gebisa Ejeta agreed. Speaking for Africa, he said: “We have made agricultural research an activity of outsiders. We need to try and make it a country-led initiative”.

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Key to this, said Nwanze, is promoting South-South collaboration and getting the BIC [Brazil, India, China] countries involved in the process. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net GCARD soundbites: day 1 March 28, 2010 Today’s sessions were full of lively debate and insightful comment from a star cast in the world of agricultural research for development. Here are some of the ‘soundbites’ from three key themes that emerged during the first day at GCARD. On discussing how to improve agricultural research for development: “We have all we need bar political will.” Jacques Diouf, Food and Agriculture Organization “Finance is the name of the game.” Amin Ahmed Mohamed Othman Abaza, Egypt “To alleviate poverty we have to go back to the grass roots.” Adnan Badram, Jordan “Gender is critical.” Kathy Sierra, The World Bank “Who will feed the world in 2050? It will not be the woman with a baby on her back and firewood on her head. It will be the youth of today. We must invest in our youth.” Kanayo Nwanze, International Fund for Agricultural Development On discussing the need to involve all stakeholders: “We are placing our bets on smallholders as being the engine of growth.” Prabhu Pingali, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “We can’t solve everything on our own.” Ismail Serageldin, Library of Alexandria “Partnerships are fundamental to delivering the transformational potential of agricultural research.” Kanayo Nwanze, International Fund for Agricultural Development On discussing the CGIAR reform “GCARD is our [CGIAR’s] coming out party.” Kathy Sierra, The World Bank “The CGIAR system must be able to excite the funding community.” Prabhu Pingali, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “I don’t believe we’ll get past the rhetoric.” Jurgen Voegele, World Bank “The mega-programmes…are not the most critical factor [of the CGIAR reform] in terms of increasing funding.” Jonathan Wadsworth, UK Department for International Development Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net

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Hand in hand for agriculture March 28, 2010 GCARD is all about uniting the various stakeholders in agricultural research. No surprise then that one of the plenary sessions on the opening day was ‘Partnership for a better future’. Gordon Conway (credit: GCARD) Gordon Conway, development expert at Imperial College, London and moderator of the session, identified three types of partnership vital for agricultural research for development. First, are partnerships that build bridges across disciplines. Conway argued that the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) was the “quintessential body to get research institutes working together”. Second on Conway’s list are partnerships linking researchers with farmers as innovators. Ajay Vashee, president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, argued that a critical first step for this was to create fora where farmers can raise their concerns, evaluate proposed research and monitor the impact of that research on their lives. Farmer and researcher meeting in India (credit: Flickr/IRRI Images) Third, are ‘scaling-up partnerships’— where something that works well locally can be taken to the national level. Conservation agriculture is a good example of how farmer-to-farmer partnerships can achieve results in this arena. The private sector is likely to be another key player, said Conway. “We live in a global world with many partners that we can bring into operation,” said Conway. The key to doing so, he added, is to “focus on the problem rather than the programme. Focusing on problems brings people together. It is particularly important that partnerships really relate to the needs of individual stakeholders and get them passionate about working together.” Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Wishful thinking March 28, 2010 Margaret Catley-Carlson asked the panel what they would like to see in the final strategy. Credit: GCARD “What one thing would you want the new [GCARD] strategy to include that you think would result in more funds for agricultural research for development?” That was the question posed by Margaret Catley-Carlson, chair of the Global Crop Diversity Trust/Global Water Partnership, to donors at an afternoon session on effective investment. The answers ranged from the very broad to the very personal. Kamal Elkeheshen of the African Development Bank said the way forward was backwards. He hopes the strategy goes back to look at the big picture of increasing food production. And the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Hafez Ghanem wants to see research that will translate into real benefits for smallholders. Other wishes included clear plans to prepare agriculture for climate change; research priorities set from the bottom up; excellence in research and negotiations guidelines.

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Both Prabhu Pingali of the Gates Foundation and the World Bank’s Jurgen Voegele took the opportunity to express scepticism about new ‘mega-programmes’ proposed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). “We would like to see two concrete mega-programmes because I don’t believe we will get beyond the rhetoric unless one is forced to write it down,” said Voegele. Pingali was even less optimistic. “I’d like to see the CGIAR system rise above their immediate concerns of maintaining current research portfolios to think about a dozen or so major problem-driven, results-oriented outputs. “The current thematic programmes are not the place to start.” Ouch. Keeping watching the blog for more CGIAR action. Naomi Antony Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net Education, education, education March 28, 2010 The lack of external agencies investing in higher education in Africa poses a “real danger to the continent”. So said Gebisa Ejeta, World Food Prize winner and Purdue University professor, at a morning session at GCARD today. He called for a resurgence of donor interest in higher education. “One thing that could derail past gains [in agricultural research for development] in Africa is the declining human capacity base on the continent.” Higher education is fundamental to improving all aspects of agricultural research for development, he said. African governments seem aware of this. Governments are busy putting up buildings and students are filling them in large numbers – but the quality of education they’re receiving is weak, said Ejeta. His call for a refocus on higher education was seconded by Adnan Badram, former prime minister of Jordan, who emphasised the need for “targeted education that can solve national problems”. Nina Federoff, science and technology advisor to the US Secretary of State, also agreed. “Just 30 years ago, USAID educated some 20,000 students—today it’s less than 1,000. That has to be reversed,” she said. The plea to donors to invest in higher education is hardly new. More than one year ago, we published a spotlight examining this very issue (see Aid for higher education). But the more calls for donor support — particularly from key players such as Ejeta and Federoff — the better. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net Three’s company? March 27, 2010 The world’s 500 million small farms, which already provide food for around two billion people, will have to improve their productivity radically to achieve the estimated 70 per cent increase in food production needed to feed a 2050 global population that will likely exceed 9.1 billion.

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There is a growing consensus that to do so, agricultural researchers and donors must tailor their programmes to, and align their priorities with, the needs of small farmers. The question is how? GCARD is taking place at the Corum Centre in Montpellier, France All three organisations behind GCARD — The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and Agropolis International in France — have helped pave the way for a participatory approach, including coordinating a global consultation of more than 2000 stakeholders in the run-up to GCARD. And all three seem genuinely committed to taking agricultural research results from the lab to the field. But, while they may to some extent be uniting under a single banner, they are all vying to strengthen their own roles within this and each has a slightly different agenda to pursue at GCARD. GFAR has the backing of the G8 group of leading industrial nations, as articulated in the L’Aquila Joint Statement on Global Food Security issued last July. Through GCARD it is trying to position itself as the indispensible channel for dialogue between agricultural science and society. CGIAR, in the throes of radical reform, will use GCARD to launch — and, more importantly, garner donor support for — its new strategy and results framework and its proposed eight new ‘mega-programmes’. It, too, hopes to clarify what it describes as its “most valuable niche in the Agricultural Research for Development system”. Agropolis International will use the conference to “introduce the assets of the regional research cluster to world decision makers” and showcase its activities. It is also out to prove its worth as a global focal point for agricultural research for development. For example, it has offered to host the new CGIAR consortium office. Delegates gather to register for GCARD The size of GCARD — around 1000 delegates expected — combined with its unique mix of donors, scientists, policymakers, civil society groups, private innovators and farmers, presents an unprecedented opportunity to create an action plan for agricultural research that is built from the bottom up. The challenge will be for the three players to come together and turn their mildly competing agendas into a real division of labour to deliver on their common purpose. Whether that can be achieved remains to be seen over the next four days. Sian Lewis Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net GCARD 2010 begins soon March 26, 2010 Around 1,000 people — donors, researchers, policymakers, farmers, private innovators and two of us from SciDev.Net included — are getting ready to travel to Montpellier, France, this weekend for the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). The conference, organised by the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the scientific research grouping Agropolis International, is the first of a series of biennial meetings planned over the next 5 years. It hopes to align agricultural researchers’ priorities with those of small farmers and improve the effectiveness of agricultural research in boosting food security and reducing poverty.

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This week SciDev.Net has published several articles that set the scene for GCARD. In Global summit seeks to transform agricultural research, we report on the feeling of urgency about the need to redirect agricultural research, as well as some of the findings from the GCARD flagship report Transforming Agricultural Research for Development that will be presented to the meeting on Monday. Monty Jones, World Food Prize winner and incoming GFAR chair, presents both the rationale behind GCARD and what the conference hopes to achieve in Agricultural research needs a global rethink. And science journalist Yojana Sharma explores the implications of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s announcement late last year that it would join the CGIAR in Are Gates and CGIAR a good mix for Africa? Naomi Antony and I will be at Montpellier and using this blog to keep you updated on the latest news and views from the conference. Watch this space… Sian Lewis

Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net

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(Netherlands) Hongersnood grijpt in toekomst om zich heen BIOLOGIE 25 maart 2010 om 13:44 uur0 reacties Auteur: Caroline Hoek Als er nu geen actie wordt ondernomen dan is de aarde binnen enkele decennia niet langer in staat om haar bewoners van voedsel te voorzien. Dat beweren wetenschappers. De wereldbevolking groeit, maar de hoeveelheid gewassen loopt – met dank aan de klimaatverandering – terug. Op dit moment heeft ongeveer één miljard mensen honger zonder dat er op korte termijn uitzicht is op voedsel. Naar schatting neemt dat aantal de komende jaren schrikbarend snel toe. Rond 2050 zou moeder aarde aan negen miljard mensen een huis bieden, maar op het gebied van voedsel het laten afweten. Tenzij er actie wordt ondernomen. Dubbel “Het is een groot probleem,” meent Gordon Conway, één van de belangrijkste sprekers op de eerste Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). Volgens de onderzoekers moet de totale voedselproductie tegen 2050 verdubbeld zijn om te voorkomen dat de problemen groter worden. Kunstmest De meest kwetsbare gebieden zijn Afrika en Azië. De groene revolutie van de jaren ‘50 en ‘60 zorgde ervoor dat het aantal gewassen in Azië en Zuid-Amerika toenamen. Afrika bleef echter achter en ook in Azië ontstaan nu problemen. Om de bevolking te kunnen voeden, is de hoeveelheid kunstmest op de akkers de afgelopen jaren veertig keer zo groot geworden. Tevergeefs: de oogst werd slechts vier keer zo groot en de grond is kapot gemaakt. Zaad Er zijn diverse oplossingen voor het probleem, maar ze zijn duur en tijdrovend. Zo zouden boeren betere informatie moeten kunnen krijgen over landbouwmethodes. Ook zouden ze over meer faciliteiten moeten beschikken. “Waar je ook gaat in Afrika: overal kun je Coca Cola of Pepsi kopen, maar een zak zaad is niet gemakkelijk te vinden.” Wanneer de Afrikanen toegang krijgen tot de beste technieken dan kunnen hun oogsten gemakkelijk vijf keer zo groot worden. Conway meent dat de honger met alle middelen moet worden bestreden. Dus ook genetische manipulatie moet een kans krijgen. Maar dat kost geld en de meeste dollars gaan op dit moment op aan onderwijs en gezondheidszorg. Zo’n 97 procent van de mensen zonder voedsel woont in het zuiden van Azië en Afrika. Deze twee regio’s zullen in de toekomst ook het hardst getroffen worden als de oogsten door toedoen van de klimaatverandering nog kleiner worden. Bronmateriaal: "Big food push urged to avoid global hunger" - News.bbc.co.uk http://www.scientias.nl/hongersnood-grijpt-in-toekomst-om-zich-heen/6355

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Experts work to make food production more sustainable By Christina Hernandez | Mar 29, 2010 Transforming the world’s agricultural research agenda in the face of climate change requires changes “as radical as those that occurred during industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries,” according to a report to be presented today at the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development. The conference, known as GCARD, was established by the G8 to develop constructive actions to reform a “fragmented global system of research and development.” Held in Montpellier, France, the conference began yesterday and runs through Wednesday. Participants include World Food Prize Laureates, heads of international organizations, agriculture ministers, farmers, community development organizations, scientists and more. At the center of the conference is the report, Transforming Agricultural Research for Development, which calls for major changes to the current agricultural research system in order to make food production more sustainable and food production systems more resilient to future climate and energy shifts. The report was prepared by a team of global food and agriculture experts led by Uma Lele, a former senior advisor at the World Bank. The report documents an approach for transforming the current global agricultural research system into “a coherent whole so as to achieve more rapid, scaled-up and sustainable impacts on food security, poverty, and the environment.” Author Eduardo Trigo, director of Grupo CEO and scientific advisor to the International Relations Directorate of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina, said: “The business-as-usual model of how things have been organized over the previous 50 to 70 years is no longer an option. We have to go back to the drawing board.” Among the objectives of the conference are to help ensure that: * Agricultural research outputs are accessible and relevant to the poor in developing countries * Research is aligned with and driven by the development needs of the resource-poor * Knowledge generation through scientific research is embedded in development thinking and practice * Funding systems are better aligned between research and development http://www.smartplanet.com/people/blog/pure-genius/experts-work-to-make-food-production-more-sustainable/2973/

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Desarrollo en el agro global El Universal Lunes 05 de abril de 2010 Con la participacion de funcionarios, productores, agrupaciones civiles, cientificos y autoridades de los cinco contienentes concluyó la primera Conferencia Global sobre Investigacion Agrícola para el Desarrollo, celebrada en Montpellier, Francia, del 28 al 31 de marzo. Esta cumbre, organizada a través del Foro Mundial en Investigacion Agricola (Global Forum on Agricultural Research, GFAR) se celebrará cada dos años con la meta de articular políticas públicas y nuevos desarrollos tecnológicos para hacer frente a los retos de duplicar el abasto de alimentos en los próximos 40 años, en un entorno cambiante amenazado por fenómenos como el cambio climático y la escasez de agua. “La crisis de alimentos aún no termina y hay una urgente necesidad de guiar esfuerzos para evitar otras en el futuro, pues con el cambio climático los días actualmente calurosos serán usuales en el futuro y no contamos con los cultivos que puedan adaptarse a esa situación" señaló Adel El-Beltagy, presidente del GFAR. Otros de los problemas delineados en el encuentro y que se buscará solucionar son la escasa inversión agrícola en investigaciones en países en desarrollo (las excepciones son China y Brasil) así como la necesidad de preservar la biodiversidad y mejorar los rendimientos de los cultivos mundiales en forma sustentable. Guillermo Cárdenas Guzmán http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/vi_62720.html