A Global Agricultural Research Partnership

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Future Harvest Foundation (FHF)

Key achievements in 2003

The year 2003 was a watershed for the Future Harvest Foundation as it underwent a Review and, at the end of the year, a pause in its operations. Despite these events, the FHF undertook a number of system-wide collaborative projects during 2003 and these are reported below.

1. FHF External Review
As part of its ongoing performance improvement processes, the Center Directors Committee and the Committee of Board Chairs commissioned an external review of the Future Harvest Foundation (FHF) in early 2003. The report of this review was considered at the May 2003 Meeting of CDC. The Review found that CGIAR members, partners and stakeholders had a high regard for the media work of FHF and its website. However, it found considerable divergence of views on the role and future preferred directions of FHF and recommended that the CDC consider a number of options for the future direction of FHF. The CDC responded by re-examining the functions of FHF and in October 2003 decided to freeze the operations of FHF for the present.

2. Public Awareness building though Media and Events
Future Harvest continued to raise public awareness for agriculture/research as a pillar of sustainable development. Environment as it relates to agriculture and ecoagriculture were featured topics in dozens of news releases in 2002-2003, with particular volume and emphasis during WSSD. These activities were complemented by policymaker-focused outreach at events held in New York, Washington, Indonesia, the Philippines, Switzerland, culminating in the establishment of a type II partnership for sustainable agriculture at WSSD in South Africa.
Future Harvest doubled its output of Center focused news releases and features in 2002, continued to widely publicize Center activities in 2003, and reached some 400 major international news outlets in 2002-2003. Future Harvest communicates with a web audience averaging 100,000 monthly and an email bulletin audience approaching 8,000 self-subscribers, including journalists, policymakers, and activists from developing and industrialized nations.
In addition, strategic advice to Centers interested in solicitations for projects and media relations via the web was provided and has also helped to initiate and manage the baseline stakeholder and RM current practice surveys mentioned below.

3. Stakeholder communications and RM perception audit
In wide cooperation with the CGIAR Secretariat and Centers, Future Harvest coordinated a stakeholder communications/RM perception audit (some 275-300 influential policy makers) and a Center RM best-practices survey. The RM survey was distributed to RM professionals and was presented to management and RM staff at AGM '03. Future Harvest also worked via the Monterrey Action Summit and Ecoagriculture Partners initiatives to establish a new series of policy targets for countries, donors and stakeholders, which has led to the Monterrey Call to Action and the Cancun trade Checklist for the WTO, among other tools for policy measurement and advocacy.
The media program worked directly on story development, placement, strategy and implementation both in a leading and supporting role according to Center preference in 2003.

4. Targeted Advocacy
Future Harvest also coordinated the Monterrey Bridge Coalition and Ecoagriculture Partners and in 2003 and established and served as the Secretariat for both the Monterrey Bridge Coalition and Ecoagriculture Partners type II initiative. Future Harvest developed Resource Mobilization (RM) strategies for Future Harvest (FH) programs including a strategy and vision for its operations, including the Monterrey Bridge Coalition, Media Program, and Ecoagriculture Partners.