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Dear All
At ICARDA we have been quietly enjoying this entire consultation
but felt in necessary to give our views on the S&T theme, which is
of particular relevance to us.
Our contribution builds on the discussion that we had at ICARDA
during the consultation, as well as from our own experience and
internal and regional consultations in AST. ICARDA has in fact
recently co-organized a World Bank consultative assessment on
AST focused on Central and West Asia and North Africa
(CWANA). See
http://www.agassessment.org/reports/Cairo/index.html
<http://www.agassessment.org/reports/Cairo/index.html>
This highlighted the role of ICT and knowledge, the increasing
efforts that should be played to develop capacity for agricultural
research and increase human and social capital, and the increased
research-extension-development linkages, which are the most
efficient path to agricultural development in the region.
Specific areas of priority for AST were identified as:
- Water resources and management: need to direct
efforts particularly to the re-use of water in relation to health and
social aspects, to increasing water use efficiency, to the
development of water scarcity and salinity tolerant species, more
efficient irrigation systems, and by directing efforts to diversify
production systems by new crops and rotations that are more
water conserving.
- Biotechnology: can address major problems faced
by farmers - e.g. by incorporating drought resistance genes that
can make a difference between harvesting and losing a crop.
Biotechnology, however, has to better target the crops and
problems of most importance to poor farmers by focusing on
'orphan' crops, neglected by the private sector, and problems of
marginal areas.
- Capacity building: need to build the capacity basis
for agricultural S&T, to empower farmers and direct research via
participatory action research, farmer-to-farmer exchanges, farmer
field schools, etc. and to pursue incentive grants, international
exchange systems, improved rewards and salaries for scientists to
encourage people into higher education and reverse the brain drain
in the region.
- Institutions: there is need to collaborate to
decrease fragmentation of efforts, by means of networks, joint
projects, linkages to global conventions, and by becoming learning
organizations.
- IPR: there is need to protect local community
knowledge, separating ownership rights of scientists and others
who develop innovations from the right to use information for
research.
The development of smallholders and their greater access to
applied AST are essential in poverty alleviation as most rural poor
are smallholders and rely on agriculture for their food security and
income. Rural households' access to AST is essential to develop
and diversify rural livelihoods and for sector and national economic
growth. Smallholders and commercial farm producers are not
competing options but complementary. Their importance will hold
in most developing countries as long as the capacity of national
economies to pull labor out of the agricultural sector remains low
and subject to national economic growth. To be effective in poverty
alleviation, AST has social value beyond that of increased
agricultural productivity, including increased capacity of rural
communities, and increased equity. The educational aspects and
the development of organizational capacity for agricultural
development is an integral part of AST and should be built into
research projects. There still is a gap in mainstreaming the
educational aspects of AST as means of achieving rural
development, but the potential is substantial if NGOs, community
organizations and other local development agencies are involved in
its promotion and development. This requires that donors support
the local innovation systems in agriculture. Experiences such as
FFS by FAO, CIALs by CIAT, Farmer Interest Groups by ICARDA
should be used to build local innovation systems and promote
building rural capacity in production, processing and marketing.
The fear that these efforts are expensive and inefficient is based on
not viewing their long-term impacts on human capacity change. To
mainstream these, however, there is need for sustained efforts in
developing, testing and evaluating them under a variety of social
settings. We are concerned like others about the stagnant and
declining resources and investment in agricultural research in
developing countries and by the lack of efforts in sustaining the flow
of young professional into AST of developing countries. There is a
need to build in all AST programs the development of young
professionals. These will be the front line of new ideas and change
in AST in developing countries. AST, without the complementary
intuitional and policy research to support it, will not achieve impact
on poverty alleviation as expected, since the adoption of AST
outputs will fail due to institutional and policy factors. We therefore
strongly support a research-development continuum where
agricultural research is injected into development projects that
promote its outcomes and recommendations. ICARDA has good
experience in these and participated in several donor-supported
projects with positive results.
In addition, we very much support multidisciplinary approaches in
AST. We apply this particularly within our and in general CGIAR's
Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) projects, which
reflect a multi- or cross- disciplinary, participatory, people.-oriented
(demand-driven) approach to research.
Thanks
Willie Erskine
William Erskine
Assistant Director General (Research)
International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas
PO Box 5466
Aleppo, Syria
Tel: +963 21 2213433/2213477/2210741
Fax: +963 21 2225105/2213490
E-mail: <address removed>
IVDN No: 680-210
USA Direct: 1+650-833-6680
USA Fax: 1+650-833-6681
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ICARDA hompage: http://www.icarda.cgiar.org/ <http://www.icarda.cgiar.org/>
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ICARDA is one of the 15 centers supported by the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
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