Ahead of Rio+20 Summit, CGIAR Presents Potential of Its Global Agricultural Research Agenda to Improve the lives of the Poor While Protecting the Planet

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL—CGIAR launched today a global research portfolio— worth $5 billion over five years— at Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARDD), which brought together more than 600 global experts to highlight the vital role of agriculture in sustainable development. Food security and sustainable agriculture have been identified as a priority area at the upcoming Rio+20 Summit, reinforcing the inextricable link between a sustainable food system and the development of a global green economy.

CGIAR’s ambitious research agenda aims to reduce rural poverty, improve the food security, health and nutrition of hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people, and ensure sustainable management of natural resources. Fifteen new programs build on CGIAR’s accomplishments over the past 40 years, including research on natural resource management that has helped to conserve water, renew soil fertility, and reduce erosion and greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously increasing farmers’ yields. If not for CGIAR’s crop improvement research, millions more hectares of land would be under cultivation today at the expense of primary forests and fragile environments.

“Agricultural research is essential to substantially increasing agricultural output and feeding the world’s growing population without damaging the environment, especially as threats to food security intensify under climate change, land degradation, and water scarcity,” said Jonathan Wadsworth, Executive Secretary of the CGIAR Fund Council. “CGIAR’s comprehensive research portfolio was specifically developed to deliver the scientific, policy and technological advances needed to tackle the major global development challenges of the century for the benefit of the poor and the planet.”

Examples of targeted impact from some of the research programs include:

• Climate change, agriculture and food security: Research will make crops less vulnerable to drought, flooding, salinity, pests and disease; reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and help cut poverty by 10% and the number of undernourished rural poor by 25%.

• Water, land and ecosystems: Research will provide sustainable irrigation to 12 million households in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020 and improve the incomes of 17 million smallholder households in rainfed and pastoral areas of Africa and South Asia.

• Forests, trees and agroforestry: After 10 years, research will prevent deforestation on 0.5–1.7 million hectares and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 0.16–0.68 billion tons per year, equivalent to taking 29–123 million cars off the road annually.

• Rice: Research will increase yields, lower prices, and lift 150 million people above the $1.25 poverty line by 2035 while reducing the water and environmental footprint of rice production and averting nearly a billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.

“CGIAR’s new portfolio of research programs targets unprecedented collaboration with a diverse range of partners to ensure that research translates into results on the ground,” said Frank Rijsberman, the new Chief Executive Officer of the CGIAR Consortium.  “It also signals a new commitment to global food security and environmental stewardship.  Science and the environment need to be best friends if we are to achieve a food secure future.”

In addition to partnerships, significant attention is also focused on gender sensitivity and capacity strengthening across all of the CGIAR programs to ensure that research results empower women and poor smallholder farmers and are replicable in developing countries around the world.

Increasing the productivity of small-scale farmers, who provide up to 80% of the food supply in developing countries, is an essential part of the sustainable agricultural equation and a top priority of the CGIAR. When smallholder farmers have access to new agricultural technologies and crop varieties resulting from research, they are able to get more out of their land, labor and livestock. Their families not only eat better and earn more money, but critical natural resources are conserved as well. In Rwanda, for example, farmers are growing improved varieties of climbing beans developed by CGIAR and its partners that produce up to three times more food on the same area of land than bush beans.

“Everyone deserves the opportunity to have access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food and economic security— as well as a healthy planet,” concluded Rijsberman. “Investing in agricultural research is a critical first step to kick-start the innovation engine for a sustainable, food secure future. ”

For more information on CGIAR’s new research portfolio and past success stories, visit the new website at www.cgiar.org.