Discussion Forums for the ARD community

Dear Colleagues

Happy Eid and wishing all the best in Eid Al Fiter.

It is my pleasure to thank everyone for the participation in this important conference for the Agricultural development. Special thanks for everyone who contributed in this E-consultation with fruitful and valuable ideas. These discussions reflect high level of qualifications and experiences.

With this message kindly find attached the final summary of this E-conference in which I tried to include all the comments in this confernce. I had to send it before three days as planned but since there were many new contributions I have delayed sending it.

In the next two days I expect to receive any comments you have on this summary.

Thank you again

Best Regards

Dr. Mohammad Majdalawi

E-Consultation Coordinator

AARINENA

The WANA e-consultations insufficiently see that local players are ideally placed to carry out "original research" on climate change variables. We live in the largest contiguous region where temperatures are already very high and set to go higher, and where water scarcity is already very critical and set to grow worse. We are already at the forefront of what only awaits other countries. We occupy a vanguard position. Rather than mostly importing technologies and doing "adaptive research", we need to be creative as we chart unknown terrain. The glass half-full aspect of our precarious situation is that we should find inspiration in the stark abiotic stresses to agriculture around us, and think very hard of novel solutions. We can be science leaders, if we put our collective minds to it.

Dear Dr. Majdalawi,

Greetings,

I would like to wish you and all the scientist and experts who had participated in this important e-consultation a Happy Eid Al Fiter.

Also, I would like congratulate you for your great effort in collecting, analyzing and integrating all the provided valuable comments by all participants into this a very important summary document.

I added minor things to the document as track change in the attached document.

Wishing the best for all of you,

Best regards,

Nader Hrimat

Deputy Director General

Applied research Instittue Jerusalem (ARIJ)

www.arij.org

Palestine

Dear Dr. Mohammad Majdaoui,
I would like to congratulate you for your endeavor to collect all this excellent information and views on WANA region. Most of the major challenges were reflected as well as options for solutions. however I would suggest that there is need to have priorities to be addressed first as resources are not always available when needed.
I would like also to suggest to put more emphasis ob human resources development at all levels to bridge the digit gap of our region; concerning water I would like to replace water use efficiency by water productivity since water is the most limiting factor and not the land; moreover for food security in the whole region the priority should be given to bridging the yield gap for the major staple food/feed crops in the region; finally our region should definitely shift to conservation agriculture as scientific, economical and environmental orientation.
Wishing you all the best

Dr. Mohammed El Mourid
RC NAP ICARDA Tunis
Tel: Office: ++ 21671752099/71752134
Fax: ++21671753170
Cellular: ++21698464104 or ++ 21623464104
email: and
Address:
ICARDA, 1, Rue des Oliviers, Menzah V
2037 Tunis Tunisia
Post Office BOX:
ICARDA BP 435
Menzah 1, 1004 Tunis, Tunisia

Colleagues,

I am afraid this input might get to you while the process has rolled up. Yet I wish to hopefully add my grain to the debate.

The debate is indeed rich (thanks to you all) and reflects the complexity of the issue we all wish to contribute AR4D. The topic is not new and we have been asking these very questions for decades now. Yet, what is new is the magnitude of the problems as new challenges of food security, climate change and their constituencies are repositioning the challenges facing AR4D in the context of new rurality.

A couple of issue we may add to the agenda:

In terms of thematic, it is too simplistic to zoom on one single issue. Germplasm, livestock, marginal land ad water, market mechanisms, off farm wealth generating activities and rural entreprise/entrepreneurship are part of the same holistic package that is meant to improve rural livelihoods through two things: Research that innovates in permanence to respond to changing challenges, and policy that uptakes , scales up and scales out the outcomes of the research to translate them into lasting impacts.

However, if I have to go for a thematic priority, I would second many colleagues that stressed that the future of the entire WANA region lies in its capacity to craft its water future, including agricultural water management. Water is the most critical political economy driver of agricultural and overall development. I would like very much to expand on why water for agric in WANA is not getting where we all know it should get. But time and the objective of the e consultation do not allow for details to come.

We heard a lot in this and other forums how much cutting edge knowledge is available. Yet little of it is making the impact it can or it should. A tough question to ask is why is this not changing over time in this region?

Mutual accountability between Research and Policy in WANA is a bottleneck. How to make research organizations service providers with supportive public policy and well performing agricultural research institutions delivering. How to introduce policy impact assessment mechanisms to allocate resources (crop (innovation and research deliverables) per drop (national funding).

Who sets the agenda for agricultural development: Governance Research Policy issue

What makes a policy research take shape or fail: issues of power versus interests.

What mechanisms work elsewhere (in India specifically) in “Good research feeds good policy” where WANA can take stock and carry on the change in farmers and non farmers livelihoods stagnant if not rolling back for decades of inadequate policies, poor implementation and little accountability (if any).

Again thanks to colleagues behind this initiative

Hammou LAAMRANI

Hammou Laamrani, PhD
WaDImena Project Coordinator
Regional Water Demand Initiative/Initiative Regionale de la Demande en Eau
International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Canada)/ Centre de Recherches pour le Developpement International (CRDI-Canada)
Middle East/North Africa Regional Office/Bureau Regional du Moyen Orient et d'Afrique du Nord
8 Ahmed Nessim Street, P.O. Box 14 Orman, Giza, Cairo, Egypt
Phone: +20 2 3336-7051 /2/3 (extension 120)
Fax: +20 2 3336-7056
www.idrc.ca/wadimena

Dear Dr Mohammad and colleagues,

I hope you all enjoyed a happy Eid Break.

Again I would like to congratulate the facilitator and the participants for the very fruitful consultation that I believe has brought a solid background for a regional agenda for agricultural research.

I have two related suggestions:

1. To reorganize the summary into clusters of issues and prioritize as suggested by Dr El Mourid of ICARDA Tunisia: the clustering could be thematic: Water Land Animal health and livestock emerging challenges and so on. It could also structured using perspectives: Institutional, Policy, Technology, Networking and knowledge management ….

2. To further develop the summary into a more readable extended (executive) summary and share it with regional and International organization involved in Agricultural development and overall development for their information and consideration in their future strategic plans

Two things were impressive in this exercise:

How much we can achieve at “almost” no cost
How huge is the potential for networking.

Finally, my wish is to formalize this network as a “community of practice” or an informal, independent “Think thank’ for policy advising on agricultural and rural development. This will be for sure a very lasting impact of this collective endeavour beyond April 2010 and the next GCARD.

All kind regards

Hammou

Hammou Laamrani, PhD
WaDImena Project Coordinator
Regional Water Demand Initiative/Initiative Regionale de la Demande en Eau
International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Canada)/ Centre de Recherches pour le Developpement International (CRDI-Canada)
Middle East/North Africa Regional Office/Bureau Regional du Moyen Orient et d'Afrique du Nord
8 Ahmed Nessim Street, P.O. Box 14 Orman, Giza, Cairo, Egypt
Phone: +20 2 3336-7051 /2/3 (extension 120)
Fax: +20 2 3336-7056
www.idrc.ca/wadimena

Dear all
After going through the final remarks and the summary of the e-consultation, I found that many issues has been raised and great a lot of efforts were paid to enrich the discussions. But when I red theremarks of Mr Mohamed El-Kholy, I realised that the issue of linkage and collaboration between the various stakeholders in the agricultural innovation system is still to be clarefied and given clear cut priority. Some have pinpointed the importance of applied research and extension, others talked about the extension system, but in this case we still look to research and extension separately whithout metioning other stakeholders. In my view, although it is difficult now to give detailed suggestion, we should look to them as one system which can be called "The improvement of the missing links between the various stakeholder in the agriculture innovation system to ensure proper collaboration and partnership for sound technology intigration and dissemination". without the development of proper mechanisms where all stakeholder come to work together, all efforts either in research or in extension or with farmers will not be utilised.

Regards
Sallam

I am Fatma SARSU and I’ve been working for Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, General Directorate of Agricultural Research. I am the Director of Industrial Crops Division. I also work as project partner in the project of “Coordination of European Research within ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and related Environmental Issues” of EU Seventh Framework Programme

With my best wishes

Dr. Fatma SARSU

Director of Industrial Crops Division,

General Directorate of Agricultural Research

Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs

Ankara-TURKEY

Tel +90 312 327 36 78