The G8 & the Global Forum on Agricultural Research Mobilizing Actions for Impacts
[News]
The L’Aquila Joint Statement on Global Food Security recognized that strengthening global and local governance for food security is key to defeating hunger and malnutrition, as well as to promote rural development.
GFAR is catalyzing a major new collective action among all the leading agricultural agencies to reshape AR4D systems to better reflect women’s perspectives and enable their direct access to innovation products and services. The Gender In Agriculture Partnership (GAP) brings together FAO, the CGIAR, UN Women, IFAD, WFP and Regional Fora, civil and private sector actors in an open and inclusive partnership to reshape agricultural agendas to better meet the needs of rural women.
By Monty Jones, Chair of GFAR
The global fragmentation and under resourcing of agricultural research, education and advisory systems and their weak linkages with wider development processes and farmers, civil society organizations and the private sector remain major bottlenecks constraining the value and impact of agricultural innovation on the lives and livelihoods of the poor.
The L’Aquila Joint Statement on Global Food Security recognized that strengthening global and local governance for food security is key to defeating hunger and malnutrition, as well as to promote rural development.
The G8 Statement supported the fundamental reform processes underway in the global agricultural research system through the Global Forum on Agricultural Research. Three years on from L’Aquila, this reform is well underway and is stimulating change around the world.
Through the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), thousands of GFAR stakeholders including the CGIAR, UN agencies, Regional Fora of public research and extension agencies, farmer and civil society organizations and the private sector have now set out and agreed to a bold agenda for transforming and strengthening agricultural research for development systems around the world, the GCARD Roadmap.
The GCARD Roadmap principles are now being put into practice in creating change around the world. These common-sense agendas and actions can contribute greatly to the G8 New Alliance proposed for Joint Actions in Africa, in particular in delivery towards the CAADP objectives:
Improving foresight and awareness on future agricultural challenges and the needs of smallholder farmers to better shape agricultural innovation
The Global Foresight Hub is producing collective learning from many diverse analyses and reviews of future needs, to better inform policies and priorities. An African Foresight Academy, developed through the Hub, will create capabilities among young African thought-leaders to determine future agricultural needs from their own perspectives, supported by analyses and skills in G8 and other countries.
Creating effective partnerships along the complex pathways between research and development outcomes and identifying practical steps towards large-scale impacts
The CAADP compacts and processes of partner engagement along intended innovation pathways and agreement on common development objectives among diverse public, private and civil partners and endusers greatly increases the likelihood of successful impacts for smallholders. Aligning common purposes and mutual commitments to objectives of the new CGIAR-CRP programmes (themselves a product of systematic reform) and other regional partnership programmes also enables key policy and capacity barriers to uptake to be recognized and addressed to greatly increase the likelihood of development success.
Addressing capacity and investment along pathways for the generation, sharing, access and use of agricultural knowledge in development
GFAR helps to support and mobilize major new initiatives, including the Tropical Agriculture Platform to address capacity needs around the world, create more attractive careers and address key barriers to impact from agricultural research and innovation. ICTs now provide crucial tools in the sharing of agricultural knowledge. As a core partner in the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative, working through FARA’s Regional Agricultural Information and Learning System programme in Africa, GFAR provides a collective commitment and international action to open and improve access to data and information and ensure that this is used in very practical ways and to best effect among the rural poor.
Inventory for Impacts
After a decade of stagnation during the 1990s, investments and human resource capacity in public agricultural research and development (R&D) averaged more than 20% growth in Sub-Saharan Africa during 2001–2008. However, this is from a low base and many countries, particularly in francophone West Africa, still face fundamental capacity and investment challenges. National investment levels in such countries have fallen so low as to leave them dangerously weak. Bringing together mechanisms such as the IFPRI-ASTI and the OECD-DAC, GFAR is establishing a global picture of the status of investment in agricultural research for development, so that policy makers can recognize the scale of the challenges and the potential returns that can be achieved from such investments and see where integrated public and private investments can bring best impacts.
Making the needs of women producers central to agricultural research and rural development processes
GFAR is catalyzing a major new collective action among all the leading agricultural agencies to reshape AR4D systems to better reflect women’s perspectives and enable their direct access to innovation products and services. The Gender In Agriculture Partnership (GAP) brings together FAO, the CGIAR, UN Women, IFAD, WFP and Regional Fora, civil and private sector actors in an open and inclusive partnership to reshape agricultural agendas to better meet the needs of rural women.
Grounded in evidence-based analyses and in field studies through FARA, FAO and national and community groups in Africa, GAP has identified clear differences in priorities, perceptions and access to technologies between men and women householders.
The recent Global Conference on Women in Agriculture, organized in India through support from the GAP, has now set out a radical agenda to reorient the role of agricultural innovation beyond productivity to better address knowledge-based issues that can particularly benefit women producers, such as household nutrition,post-harvest loss reduction, value addition and enhancing market access and returns, as well as addressing the wider environment of inequalities that constrain women and condemn them to lives of drudgery and disadvantage.
Keeping the process on track
The knowledge sharing and mutual commitments and accountabilities established through the multi-stakeholder GFAR mechanism, in partnership with political commitments such as CAADP, are creating real change in AR4D systems
around the world.
around the world.
The GCARD 2012, to be held in Uruguay in October 2012, provides a key opportunity for all AR4D sectors and regions to report their activities and outcomes since 2010 and to agree collective actions and next steps in implementation of the GCARD Roadmap and the CGIAR Strategy & Results Framework.
By this step-wise process, GFAR is enabling rapid change in agricultural innovation systems around the world, to ensure that they are driven by the needs of smallholder producers, in particular of women, and breaking down barriers between institutions, sectors and countries so that agricultural knowledge and innovation can swiftly bring benefits to all.
Related links
- Gordon Conway & other international experts call on the G8 to combat hunger & poverty
- Global Leaders to Launch G8 Food Security Agenda at Chicago Council on Global Affairs Symposium
- Expanding the Focus from Relief to Resilience
Posted on 18/05/2012
