People and partnerships: medium-term plan of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) 1998-2000+

CIMMYT’s research and training strategies are firmly grounded in the three overriding goals of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) – the alleviation of poverty, protection of natural resources, and sustainable food security. We address these goals through research aimed at the development of more efficient, more robust maize and wheat germplasm, through natural resource and economics research designed to enhance the sustainability of maize- and wheat based production systems, and through a range of related research and training activities. This Medium-Term Plan (MTP) presents a program of research and training activities that follows on from the Center’s Strategic Plan and its 1994-98 MTP. It reflects an extensive process of consultation with many stakeholders, both internal and external, as well as an assessment of changing needs and CIMMYT’s comparative advantage in meeting them. Poverty alleviation is a dominant theme in this MTP. Wherever possible, we explicitly consider the likely impact of alternative activities and associated outputs on poor consumers and producers, and especially on poor rural women. Similarly, we have tried to clarify the contributions of our various activities to the CGIAR goal of protecting the environment. We also explicitly respond to the CGIAR’s priorities as expressed in the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Priorities and Strategies paper, describing where we converge – and where we diverge – from those priorities and why. This MTP projects the Center’s agenda and financial needs forward to the year 2000, but many of the activities described herein will continue well into the next century. We have identified milestones by which progress can be measured throughout the planning period; but in many cases, while significant progress is anticipated by 2000 toward the delivery of most of our outputs, some will be necessarily delivered over the longer term. Hence the reference to a 1998-2000+ planning horizon. We begin with a strategic overview that includes a review of the overriding importance of maize and wheat to the poor in the developing world and important trends in the global maize and wheat economies. From there we move on to CIMMYT’s future role in addressing the challenges implied by those trends, an overview of the process by which we achieved consensus among important stakeholders on that role, highlights of the Center’s proposed research and capacity-strengthening projects, and a discussion of the financial aspects of the plan. We call the readers’ attention, as well, to the boxes placed throughout this document, in which we highlight several important considerations that underlie our planning for the future.