CGIAR: Food Security - Phase 01

• Research unit: SDC
• Project number: 7F-06286.01

Key words (English)

CGIAR

Short description (English)

Recent riots in over 40 countries on food prices have demonstrated that agricultural commodities are not just commodities but essential ingredients for live. Food security for all, meaning everybody having access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life; where malnutrition is absent; and food originating from well-integrated, competitive, and low-cost systems based on the sustainable use of natural resources, gender equity, and a reduction in child labour in agriculture, has become an issue for most politicians. It is widely recognized that access to food is a basic human right. It is also recognized that the increase of productivity of staple food - especially when produced by farmers which are themselves food insufficient and poor - is an important pillar for improving food supply for the poor. However, production and productivity increases must be complemented by increasing incomes of poor people and improving farmer access to markets. At the national or regional level storage facilities and social safety nets are indispensable. The production challenge has become burning again since it involves not only producing basic food for the human population which will rise to 8.5 billion by 2030 but also to satisfy the demand of higher income social groups for high value food from animal sources. The increased combined demand however, must be met in an physical environment with increasing stress from climate change and increasingly scarce and lower quality land and water resources. Overall South Asia remains the region with the largest number of hungry, accounting for 36 percent of all undernourished. However the incidence of poverty and hunger is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region where the impact of climate change is going to be most negative and where institutional and human capacities in agriculture are the weakest. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is one of the evident instruments of the international community to tackle the productivity and the food policy challenges.

It is therefore that the CGIAR has reaffirmed in the definition of its research priorities the commitment to high quality, pro-poor research for food security and sustainable productivity increases and the continuous analysis of the international and national policy environment with respect to food security for the poor. The CGIAR recognizes that a big part of the supply response must come from the world's 450 million smallholders in developing countries who, as a group, are the most important producers of food in the developing world. Hence any international research agenda must explicetly be directed to these smallholders' needs. The work of the CGIAR with respect to food security is manyfold but the agenda of five centers and one Challenge Program is mainly dominanted by food security concerns. These are namely IRRI, the center which is dealing with rice, CIMMYT which has a global mandate for supporting maize and wheat research for development, IITA which deals with specific issues related to Africa and more prticularly with sweet potato, maize and cassava and the International Potato Center (CIP) which is concerned about roots and tubers with first of all irish potatoes which have increased dramatically in importance due to their capacity to produce high value food in short growing cycles and high stress environments. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) headquartered in Washington has become a vital strategic think thank ot the system with regard to global food security. The funcion of the Generation Challenge Program is to bring advanced biological research methods into the pro-poor food security agenda of the CGIAR. The objectives of the work of these entities can be summarized as

1) Producing more and better food at lower cost through genetic improvements,

2) Enhancing the productivity of sustainable agroecological production systems, and

3) Improving policies and facilitating institutional innovation to support sustainable reduction of poverty and hunger.

The combined commitment of SDC to these five Centres and one program is of 3.75 Million CHF. Favourable reviews and strategic assessment by SDC reserved, it is anticipated that this commitment will be renewed.

Project aims (English)

The overall goal of the research carried out by the CGIAR and its partners is to improve the

livelihood of low-income people in developing countries through reduced poverty, food insecurity

and malnutrition, and to foster better institutions, policies, and sustainable management of natural

resources of particular importance to agriculture and poor people.

Within this broader objective the CGIAR and its partners have a defined objective to address food

security in rural areas through productivity gains, sustainable agricultural production systems and

improved policy making at national and international level.

The basic entry point which has been essential to the success of the CGIAR and continues to be

highly relevant is the focus on the productivity of small holder family farms in developing countries.

While small holders can sometimes gain from technology developed for commercial farms it has

been shown that in most situations specific technologies are needed for them because of their

reduced ability to invest in capital intensive inputs and less emphasis on labour-saving

technologies. This is why genetic improvement for yield enhancement, disease resistance and

nutritional quality is essential for small holders. The use of modern biological techniques is a must

to have an innovation speed which allows to keep up with challenges.

However, while crop improvement will always be important for food security, the sustainability of

agroecosystems will increasingly be important. As water and land resources become scarcer it

becomes vital to enhance their productivity in a sustainable manner. The CGIAR has not been a

champion of a production system perspective so far with the exception of some work done in

agroforestry. It is therefore an area where major challenges are ahead also in terms of adapting

the human and institutional capacity of the system. Policy research and advising from an honest

broker role has proven its relevance not only in the last month, when IFPRI became a key

reference for all politicians put under pressure to respond to the food price crisis. The call of

Joachim von Braun (DG IFPRI) for a comprehensive agenda involving increased support to

sustainable intensification, better market access and also social protection to assure food for all is

a very important message also to production oriented agricultural scientists.

The more specific objectives of the research entities covered in this proposal are:

1) Producing more and better food at lower cost through genetic improvements

Improved crop productivity plays a key role in producing enough food. Its advantage is its direct

impact on farm level and the resilience of crop technologies which can be reproduced by farmers.

Once they have variety the farmers can become the owners of the technologies independently

from extension and supply services. Work on crop productivity is the core of the CGIAR centers

covered in this proposal (CIP, CIMMYT, IRRI, and UTA). Together they are the largest holder of

crop diversity for the public and the poor with regard to important food crops such as wheat, maize,

millet & sorghum, roots & tubers, rice,, leguminous crops, banana, and have an impressive record

of producing pro-poor technologies. The open pollinated, drought tolerant maize varieties for

Southern Africa are just one example.

Maize and wheat research - the area of CIMMYT's expertise - is an important path to development,

because maize and wheat are pivotal to nutrition, health, income, and environmental sustainability

in low-income countries. The demand for tuber crops to ensure food security and to contribute to

sustainable livelihoods in developing countries is predicted to grow steadily over the next decades.

In fact potato has become the third most important staple crops and is production is on rising scale

in particular in Asia. Because of this, the crop has been honoured by the UN system with an

International Year of Potato (2008) in which SDC participates actively. UTA is crucial for

implementing the crop agenda on Africa and expanding it to crops which are essential to food

security in Africa such as millet, cassava and sweet potato. In technical terms the research focus

across crops are

Maintaining and enhancing yields and yield potential of food staples (including biotic

stresses)

Improving tolerance to selected abiotic stresses

Enhancing nutritional quality and safety

Some of the cross-cutting research questions with special reference to small holders are:

How do we support the necessary tradeoffs among increasing the productivity of food and

animal feed to meet changing food habits?

How do we empower marginalized stakeholders to sustain the diversity of agriculture and

food systems, including their cultural dimensions?

And how do we increase productivity under marginalized, rainfed lands and incorporate

them into local, national and global markets?

2) improving sustainable agroecological production systems

Traditionally the CGIAR agenda has been focussed on crop improvement. However, the need for

sustainable intensification of small holder systems under stress from climate change and pressure

on land and water is urging. The CGIAR must adapt its agenda and the institutional and human

capacity to this challenge. Good examples are the work on the wheat/rice system in the Indo-

Gangetic watershed and work on integrated rice/fish/agroforestry systems. In these kind of

systems, productivity must be assessed over cropping cycles in a system view. Agroforestry

component such as fruit trees and livestock are crucial components of integrated systems. The

CGIAR needs to team up with other research capacities in order to live up to the research

questions posed by them. Some of the questions to be addressed are:

What is the contribution of diverse systems to household food security and supply of local

an regional markets and what is role of them under even higher pressure on water.

How can intensified small holder systems provide essential environmental services such as

water storage and biodiversity preservation? What are the best means to renumerate such

services?

What is the impact on gender balances of intensifying small holder systems. Is the

additional work load mainly passed on to women? How can women be assured of keeping

control over a fair of the products of their labour?

3) Improving policies and facilitating institutional innovation to support sustainable

reduction of poverty and hunger.

The dismantling of agricultural research and extension systems in small, agricultural dependent

countries is one to the most devastating results of the shift away from agriculture of the

international community over the last 20 years. Instead of abolishing them they should have been

reformed and put on a solid multi-stakeholder basis involving farmers organizations, the private

sector and public entities. National policies and international support must thrive at re-establishing

minimal capacities of national systems and provide the necessary technological and institutional

support to them. Increasingly the CGIAR resorts to technical cooperation with emerging countries

to provide part of their services in a partnership approach because these systems have grown on

competence and interest in international cooperation and often share climatic conditions with

smaller, agricultural dependent countries. Hence, institutional strengthening is an important

component of policy support. Spearheaded by IFPRI it is shared with most of the other centres

since capacity building is a core function of the CGIAR. Of much importance is policy advice to

national partners, for example for the governance of natural resources and the pro-poor planning of

infrastructure development (markets, roads, etc.). The research agenda can be summarized as

follows.

Improving science and technology policies and institutions

Making international and domestic markets work for the poor

Improving rural institutions and their governance

Improving research and development options to reduce rural poverty and vulnerability