The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) is an innovative attempt to work towards a global system of agricultural research for development.

GFAR is a stakeholder-led initiative. As such, all its activities are carried out by the stakeholders themselves and the Secretariat plays the role of broker and catalyst. This implies that one of the basic financial principles is "cost sharing", with each partner contributing to the GFAR programmes according to their resources. The GFAR Secretariat is in no way a donor or an executing agency of donor. Only seed money is available to assist the stakeholders in developing and formulating ideas and joint programmes or to favour inter-regional collaboration.

The GFAR Donor Support Group has been successful so far in mobilizing an annual budget of approximately $US 300,000 for the Secretariat and roughly the same amount for its operations. The year 2000 was exceptional in this respect as higher contributions were made in order to mobilize all the GFAR stakeholders in the preparation and participation at the first GFAR Conference.