What should be priorities for International Agricultural Research for Development?

Source: CGIAR

Let your voice be heard!

The world is developing a new set of global goals and targets – Sustainable Development Goals – to follow on from the current Millennium Development Goals that have been hugely influential in shaping development policies and investments.

We believe agriculture is the backbone for sustainable development. Agriculture is critical to food security, of course, but also to nutrition security, to health, to reducing poverty, and to sustainable landscapes. As even the USA and China agree on tackling climate change together, climate smart agriculture will be more and more central to the debate on mitigation as well as adaptation. Food systems can become carbon neutral. Smallholder farmers need to become more resilient to deal with the additional stresses caused by climate change. We need agro-food systems that are healthy, nutritious and sustainable. Agriculture can only live up to these challenges if it is able to change and adapt through innovation. And research is the engine that drives innovation.

What should be the priorities for agricultural research and innovation? What should be the priorities for publicly funded international research on agriculture in a development context? What should be the priorities for the CGIAR and its partners in research, in development and the private sector? And how do these priorities link back to the Sustainable Development Goals?

The CGIAR is in the process of developing a new strategy¹ that will set such priorities, and will provide a concrete results framework for its work, to enable focused investments that lead to transformative development outcomes.

As the key elements of the new strategy are emerging, we² are launching a broad stakeholder consultation to get feedback from key partners on our emerging ideas. Discussion of this framework begins the consultations of the 3rd Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD3).The consultation is launching today and will have two main steps through February 2015:

Step 1: CGIAR SRF Stakeholder consultation: November through December 2014

Stakeholders and partners are invited to provide inputs or feedback on emerging key elements in the SRF such as CGIAR’s vision; mission; goals; niche, and others, as summarized in a SRF Summary Document (find it here). This can be done through the following channels:

• submit any responses via email to
• discussion of this note, questions and summary in a number of meetings taking place in November-December (FARA@15, EFARD and others)
• e-consultation on www.cgiar.org/srfe-consultation
• participate in a survey to gather comments and ideas at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CGIAR_GFAR-SRFconsultation
• join an online discussion during the weekly ‘Call-in Program’

Stakeholder feedback will be used in the development of the next draft of the SRF, due out in January 2015. Feedback will also be collected and shared on a dedicated online space at www.cgiar.org/srfconsultation.

Step 2: CGIAR Stakeholder consultation on final draft SRF: January through February 2015

Stakeholders and partners will be further invited to comment on the draft of the SRF that is expected to be released in late January, 2015 – ahead of a final version to be approved in April-May 2015. Stakeholder comments, and the manner in which comments are accounted for, will be captured into an accountability matrix to be released with the final version.

We know that we are asking much of people who are all busy and tired of surveys – to provide inputs to our process. But we also believe this is a great opportunity to have a say in and contribute to the formulation of this key roadmap, which will guide CGIAR in the next round of investments: the second generation of CGIAR Research Programs for the period 2017-2021.

So please help us shape the priorities for international agricultural research for development. Without agriculture there can be no sustainable development. Without research there will not be the innovation required to make our agro-food systems healthy, nutritious and sustainable.

This is your chance to shape international research priorities and actions. Let your voice be heard!

Mark Holderness, Executive Secretary, GFAR
Frank Rijsberman, CEO, CGIAR Consortium

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[1]The new CGIAR Strategy and Results Framework (SRF).
[2]The consultation is a joint project of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the CGIAR Consortium, in close consultation with the CGIAR’s Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC).

Picture courtesy CIAT on Flickr