IFPRI-hosted this workshop of CGIAR’s Global Futures for Agriculture where various stakeholder representatives from IFPRI and 10 other CGIAR centers reviewed the project’s newest strategic foresight methods and the types of technologies being used in the project. Each center presented a brief overview of the technologies and management systems being used in the Global Futures project.
Global Futures for Agriculture is designed to provide tools for using limited resources more efficiently in support of agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability in developing countries. “Sustainable agricultural growth in developing countries is challenged as never before—by climate change, increasingly volatile food and energy markets, natural resource exploitation, and a growing population with aspirations for a better standard of living,” according to Mark Rosegrant, Director of IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division, where the Global Futures project is based.
Workshop Highlights
During the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) presentation, Agricultural Economist Dolapo Ebahoro compared international trade in livestock commodities to smallholder livestock production and productivity. “There are opportunities for CORAF (West and Central African Council for Research and Development) countries to tap into the new technologies, not just smallholder production but countrywide. ILRI has a role in the Global Futures Project–Livestock Quantification for IMPACT and in assessing scenarios and ex-ante impact evaluation of policies and technologies. “
ILRI team leader Derek Baker acknowledged the funders of ILRI’s work: CCAFS (Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and PIM (Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets). According to Baker, PIM is planning a Livestock Policy conference on integrating IMPACT for next year to bridge the gaps between resilience models and inputs to the IMPACT 3 exercise.
“CCAFS funding of ICRAF’s (World Agroforestry Center) engagement in Global Futures has reinvigorated efforts at ICRAF to build such a model. I believe that Global Futures has benefitted tremendously from CCAFS funding. Had the project remained restricted to the few centers that started it, conclusions and recommendations arising from it would have remained simplistic, and they would probably have completely failed to consider natural resource management issues. These are still not very strong in the project, but inclusion of the CCAFS-funded fellows has clearly added richness to the project,” said Eike Luedeling, a climate change scientist. He continued, “various projects at ICRAF address all of these issues. Currently, addressing climate change issues in agroforestry is difficult, because—unlike for the simpler systems targeted by most other centers—no robust agroforestry models exist that could be used in something like the Global Futures Project.”
The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) highlighted upcoming work including the effects of future shocks and climate change on cassava and plague manihot (affecting cassava plants) in a variety of regions in South Asia. Future CIAT work also includes bean production, trade models, and possible disaggregation of different kinds of beans, as well as cassava crop uses based on activities and commodities. The DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer) model for cassava will create an interesting production and trade model.
A presentation by CCAFS Program Coordinator Ioannis Vasileiou covered CCAFS’s structure and its benefits to the CGIAR Research Programs. As Karen Brooks, PIM’s director, observed: “Working with CCAFS as a generous co-financier has been very positive—they have shown how agroecology is changing and how important new good-bet technologies are for future projects. Working with CCAFS pushes the projects to think how water, temperatures, and other factors are influencing the climate change outcomes. We definitely appreciate the ability to work closely with CCAFS and the partnership we have with the CGIAR Research Programs—we also hope to have a stronger relationship with regards to systems and commodities in the future.… Our relationship with CCAFS is a good model for the strong coalition of partnerships among the CG centers.”