Day 1 (28 March): ‘Reshaping the future of agriculture together’
A high-level dialogue, focusing on changes and actions required by global, regional and national institutions for agricultural research to have greater development impact for the poor.
Aims:
Translate commitments from recent high level summits, including L’Aquila, into actions required to strengthen national agricultural research for development systems in the developing world.
Drive reform and reorientation of agricultural research systems and innovation pathways around the world to meet the demand for improved livelihoods of resource-poor farmers.
Outputs from the Meeting
Perspectives from representatives of governments, major intergovernmental agencies, research institutions, civil society, development banks and donor agencies that set the scene for the need to:
- Increase and improve investment, both financial and human capital, in agricultural research and innovation for development
- Improve collaboration and partnership globally, especially North-South and South-South, among nations and Institutions in agricultural research for development
- Enable greater sharing of information, knowledge and skills globally related to agricultural research for development
- Strengthen the inclusion of all stakeholders, especially farmer representatives, in decision making and governance related to agricultural research at National, Regional and Global levels
Day 2 (29 March): What are the challenges we need to address?
Intended outputs from the day:
- Region-by-region analysis of the needs, challenges and barriers to agricultural development for the poor that can be met through the generation, access and use of agricultural knowledge;
- Open discussion and inter-regional dialogue on common themes and needs identified around the world; and
- Analysis and discussion of the current status of the world’s agricultural research for development systems and what needs to be addressed for these to be more effective and better driven by development demands.
Day 3 (30 March): What do we need to do better? Strengthening the impact of agricultural research in development
Intended outputs from the day:
- Presentation and feedback discussion of the proposed Strategic Results; Framework and proposed collective actions identified by the CGIAR as a basis for increasing development outcomes at scale; and
- Discussion of key strategic changes required in the functions and roles of agricultural research systems at national and international levels for these to contribute more effectively towards development impact
Day 4 (31 March): Development of a roadmap for collective action
Intended outputs from the day:
Plan developed for specific measures and actions required over the next few years to enable research to deliver more effective impact for the poor through strengthening and transforming agricultural research for development:
- Cross-cutting discussion to refine the outcomes of the previous day’s sessions;
- Refining and populating pathways that will transform AR4D over the next 6 years, with desired collective actions identified through the working groups concerned; and
- Opportunity for specific commitment by individuals and institutions to new agendas, actions and transformative codes of conduct between diverse AR4D partners.
The GFAiR Blog 
research system in the developping countries is falling down for the following reasons :
1) funds from the international cooperation became very reduced due to economic crisis and the stupid wars
2) many resarchers are not well informed on the real problems of farmers, for thesimple reason that they are not frequentely in the field
3) Policy makers doesn’t give any priorities to the research, so the allocated budget is usually ridiculous
4) Monney in the CGIAR centers are not equally shared between CG researchers and NARS researchers
5) No acknowledgement of the scientific capacities of developping countries researchers
Leave a note for me as to the update
Non-acknowledgement of the scientific capacities of scientists from developing countries is also forcing scientists from developing countries to conduct research that will appeal to their coleagues from the developed economies and in doing so, they have shifted from conducting research into pertinent problems confronting agriculture in their respective countries.
Again, governments of developing countries do not value the need for research and as such cutting down their support for research institutions. An emerging situation in my Department in the University is that, students are now required to personally support their undergraduate research projects.
There is need for governments in developing countries to support research instead of spending huge sum of money on politics.
Moreso,there is no condusive environment for meaningful research in some of the developing countries such as, electricity, water etc. and this is the reason why scientists from developing countries prefer going to developed countries to carry out research.
Comment from manoranjan dutta
manoranjandutta[at]rediffmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 8:56
Subject: Re: FW: GCARD E-News
Update
“The recent economic recession and impending climate change should drive our focus towards agriculture as a mode of sustainable development if mankind has to survive on planet earth. The fallacy behind industrial and service sector centric development model will bring devastation to the developing world where resource base is degenerating at an alarming rate. There has to be real commitment to the actual agricultural producers rather than clever lip service by the world community whose survival is not immediately at risk by changes in agricultural production. We can no longer put this issue under carpet thinking that it is somebody else’s problem. We should understand that we are in the same boat. The conflicting interest groups fighting for the pie without giving back to agriculture the mother of all culture should realize the importance of coming to the roots i.e saving our natural resources from irreparable degradation and raising agricultural production and productivity for the entire humanity rather than small proportion of people living artificial and inflated lives.
M. Dutta
A big thank you to Alfaiz Chaouki, Michael Boateng, Obadina Adewale, and Manoranjan Dutta for your comments.
We think that your concerns are at the very heart of the GCARD conference. This high-level event precisely aims at gaining the commitment of the international agriculture for development community to invest more in agriculture, its research, and education in order to have greater development impact for the poor. Please follow closely at the outcomes of the very first session on Day 1 and the session entitled “Refinement and key elements of the RoadMAP (Montpellier Action Plan) to improve the value of agricultural research in development at national, regional and international levels The RoadMAP derived from the Conference deliberations will set out pathways for reform and reorientation of agricultural research systems and innovation pathways around the world, against which all constituencies brought together in GFAR can review and assess our collective progress and change through successive GCARD meetings.
On funding issues mentioned in several of the comments you might want to follow the summaries related to the funding session on this blog. The session will take place on Day 1, March 28 entitled: Investing for a better future and is conceived as an introduction on the need for effective investment in national systems, followed by panel dialogue on strategic funding scenarios and modalities to turn commitments into actions.
With regards to education and capacity strengthening there is an afternoon-long session planned for Day 3, March 30. The intention here is to stimulate active discussion of strategic actions required among all, build from priorities identified across regions and draw from pre-conference meetings, processes or analyses of critical issues that will set the scene for discussion by Conference delegates. Watch out this blog for summaries, and interviews on this and related topics.
While we are not able to guarantee replies to all your comments, please keep going your valuable contributions and your critical perspective and help us to enrich this dialogue in the future.
Dr. Mark Holderness, GFAR Executive Secretary