Agriculture is highly context specific, yet agricultural issues have global resonance. One of the prime roles of the Global Forum is to strengthen partnership between regions, so that international learning is enhanced, technologies and inspiration spread more rapidly and confidence can be placed in ideas validated through very practical experience in other parts of the world.

Agricultural science is constrained by its own project processes, values, attribution systems and institutional interests, all of which constrain true partnership.
How can inter-regional processes break through these barriers, avoid ‘reinvention of the wheel’ and hasten development impact through new ways of working?

GFAR does not implement programmes in its own right and is not a funding agency. It does however, provide a key vehicle for diverse partners to come together, share their experiences and find common cause and equitable partnership in addressing key themes. It provides an inclusive and objective mechanism for issues affecting the poor to be explored and innovative partnerships to be formed.

Through equitable international partnerships and thematic networks, the poor can obtain ready access to new ideas and technologies that would otherwise remain unobtainable for many years. GFAR’s Global Partnership Programmes are an innovative way of working, based on mutual commitments to specific agendas and building on the different strengths of partners from all sectors in ARD. These principles allow the equitable development of ideas, contributed to by all and avoiding distortion of agendas through the power relationships determined by prior access to funding.
Through such operation, they break down the barriers between research and extension institutions and other sectors and help to foster real linkage between science and society.

Specific Objectives
Through providing support to nascent networks and partnership programmes GFAR enables implementing institutions to deliver subsequent development outcomes through open and effective partnership and the integration of resources and activities.
Following a recent and very positive review of these programmes, it has been recently agreed that any such programmes for which GFAR’s central support is requested should follow specific principles, as detailed here.

Principles of GFAR’s partnership Programmes:

1. Build on on-going activities and strong institutional commitments to conceptualize and address inter-regional or global concerns.
2. Are endorsed by partners in the regions concerned as aligning with their highest agricultural development priorities
3. Involve more than one region and link with the regional fora concerned
4. Include financial resource commitment from the regions concerned
5. Set out a clear pathway by which development impact will subsequently be obtained and show a specific focus on how the poor will benefit from the activity
6. Are developed and championed by a multistakeholder group, responsible and accountable for the implementation of the programme and ensuring that GFAR principles are maintained throughout
7. Directly involve partners from both research and wider society, representative of diverse backgrounds and perspectives and adding value to what the bodies concerned could achieve by themselves
8. Work to also cross-link related initiatives initiated and developed by the partners concerned
9. Demonstrate impact on individual and institutional behaviours in opening research systems out to new partners and perspectives

A key purpose of these activities is to increase coherence, awareness and efficiency among actors in addressing major global themes e.g. by supporting and cross-relating initiatives in agriculture and climate change between FAO, CGIAR, IFAP and the Regional Fora.

Current areas of focus are:

I. Climate change
II. Linking Farmers to Markets
III. Conservation agriculture
IV. Crops for the future
V. Learning networks: Biotechnology and commodity crops
VI. Global Horticulture Initiative