Family farms are the backbone of most developing country economies. For billions of
people, agriculture represents daily survival and the best hope for a better tomorrow.
Food production remains the most important use of the world’s natural resources. But
a billion people, mostly farmers in tropical countries, live in extreme poverty.
Global forces are at work that will have far-reaching effects on their
livelihoods. In some cases global change will offer farm families new opportunities to
escape poverty, while in others it could tighten poverty’s grip on their lives.
CIAT’s vision for the future—the heart of its strategic plan for
the next decade—is that these men, women, and children will turn deprivation into
sustainable rural livelihoods. As our annual report for 2000-2001 illustrates, Center
scientists can speed this transformation through research that contributes to competitive
agriculture, healthy agroecosystems, and rural innovation.
Toward a Global Research System
Director General’s Message
Over the past year or so, we at CIAT have crafted a new strategy to pursue our goal of
fighting poverty in the tropics while protecting natural resources. At the core of this
strategy is a vision of sustainable rural livelihoods, grounded in competitive small-scale
agriculture, healthy tropical agroecosystems, and community-based innovation.
Our strategic vision emerged from an analysis not only of what CIAT has achieved during
more than 30 years of research but also of the rapid changes sweeping our world. It
recognizes that globalization presents an uncertain mix of opportunities and threats. It
takes the view that high-quality science is a powerful tool for bringing
globalization’s benefits to the rural poor of the tropics, while minimizing the
risks.
The emerging vocabulary of globalization includes terms like biodiversity and
biopiracy, food security and water scarcity, global warming and disaster mitigation, free
trade and cultural diversity, genetically modified organisms and biosafety. CIAT’s
R&D efforts are clearly relevant to these and other international public concerns. And
we intend to keep it that way.
A tighter ship plying global waters
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which backs CIAT
and 15 other Future Harvest centers, is now well advanced in a detailed reassessment of
how the centers can work together more effectively in the future. It’s particularly
intent on addressing issues of global reach, like those framed in conventions on
biodiversity, desertification, and climate change.
Part of the CGIAR plan, approved in May 2001 at Durban, South Africa, is to harmonize
research programming across centers and to streamline management structures. This will
allow the Future Harvest centers to function as a more integrated global system—to
run a tighter ship, so to speak. As CIAT’s director general, I’m committed to
ensuring the Center contributes fully and positively to the CGIAR’s reform plan. Our
long-term capacity to conduct socially and environmentally progressive research for
development depends on the health and unity of all of the Future Harvest centers.
Within several years, a sizable share of CGIAR funding is expected to go to a small
number of "global challenge programs." These will link Future Harvest centers
with each other, and with other sources of expertise, in research on world-scale problems.
Proposed topics include the impact of climate change on small-scale agriculture and the
critical role of water resources in food and environmental security.
Elevating the game
As CGIAR Chairman Ian Johnson recently said, it’s time to "elevate the
game." This means increasing the impact and visibility of CGIAR research by
connecting it with the highest levels of international dialog, policy, and action. The
shift of emphasis will involve major tradeoffs among research priorities as well as new
ways of doing business—among scientists, center managers, and national partners.
The exact trajectory of CGIAR changes will not be known for some time. Nevertheless, I
believe CIAT’s new strategic plan for 2001-2010 is consistent with the CGIAR’s
commitment to efficiency and global relevance. The quest for sustainable rural livelihoods
takes research beyond the goal of merely increasing the volume of agricultural production
and monetary income to include the development of social capital, enhancement of human
well-being, and protection of the planet’s natural resources.
One step CIAT recently took in an effort to elevate the game was to formally challenge
a US patent granted on a "new" variety of bean that was claimed to have a
distinctive yellow color (see box). The plant material covered by the patent is nothing
other than a popular type of bean grown and eaten for centuries by Latin Americans. The
patent application, I believe, was legally, morally, and scientifically unfounded.
We hope our move, the first-ever challenge of a plant patent by a Future Harvest
center, will set a global precedent. Concerted action is needed to protect the rights and
livelihoods of developing country farmers. At the same time, we need to maintain the
ability of research centers like CIAT to freely produce and distribute public goods for
the benefit of all.
Joachim Voss
Director General, CIAT
Yellow beans and patent injustice
CIAT recently launched a formal challenge to a 1999 US patent that grants a businessman
from Colorado intellectual property rights over a variety of common bean with yellow
seeds. Our decision to challenge the patent underscores our concern over the continuing
vulnerability of the livelihoods of rural people in developing countries and the need to
protect traditional agricultural knowledge and biological heritage.
The patented material, designated Enola, was produced from seed obtained in Mexico. The
patent, granted to the owner of Pod-ners L.L.C., claims Enola is a "new field bean
variety that produces distinctly colored yellow seed which remains relatively unchanged by
season." CIAT’s counterclaim, backed by rigorous documentation, is that the
material in question is based on traditional cultivars adapted over many centuries by
Andean and Mexican farmers. It is believed that the gene controlling the color of the seed
is of Peruvian origin.
Patent number 5,894,079 grants the owner of Pod-ners a monopoly within the USA over
common beans exhibiting the shade of yellow noted in the patent application. It thus
denies Mexican producers the right to freely market one of their most valuable and
hard-won renewable resources—traditional crop cultivars that also serve as food
staples. The patent also seriously limits work carried out by US plant breeders with all
classes of yellow beans.
The Enola patent issue was pushed into the international limelight in 2000 largely
through the efforts of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC
Group), until recently known the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI).
In its challenge to the Enola patent, CIAT argues that the protected
bean variety is "substantially identical" to at least six yellow bean samples
found in the Center’s seed bank. Under an agreement with the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), the contents of this collection are considered international public
goods and may not be patented by anyone.
Recently, the case became more complex when the patent holder filed
additional claims based on information contained in his original application. The US
Patent Office will now conduct a joint review of CIAT’s challenge and the patent
holder’s additional claims. If the patent is upheld, then the issue could end up
being appealed to a US court. Such a legal battle would be costly and best handled as a
joint effort of the Future Harvest centers, according to Voss. "But we’ll cross
that bridge when we come to it."
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Nurturing Rural Livelihoods in the Tropics
CIAT’s Strategic Plan for 2001-2010
Economic development over the past century, driven largely by science and technology,
has significantly cut the proportion of the global population that is poor. Nevertheless,
one-fifth of the world’s people are still absolutely poor, living on one US dollar a
day or less. Among the most destructive effects of this persistent poverty is hunger,
suffered by some 800 million people, mostly women and children.
The world’s hot spots of poverty are and will continue to be tropical countries,
especially in Africa and Asia. Rural communities that depend on small-scale agriculture
and food processing for survival are the most disadvantaged. They are also the people most
vulnerable to the ill effects of environmental degradation. And for lack of political and
economic power, they risk further marginalization by the growing forces of globalization.
CIAT believes that improving the livelihoods of small farmers through high-quality
science is an effective and direct way to address the needs of the tropical world’s
rural people, while supplying cheaper food for the urban poor. The notion of sustainable
rural livelihoods is at the core of CIAT’s strategic vision for 2001-2010.
As a research center specializing in people-centered solutions for tropical
agriculture, CIAT will use partnership-based research to help its rural clients get to
three intermediate destinations along their path to sustainable rural livelihoods:
(1) competitive agriculture, (2) agroecosystem health, and (3) collective rural innovation
based on the accumulation of social capital.
Our scientific portfolio
To promote these conditions, CIAT will integrate its past research experience with
recent scientific advances in genomics, agroecology, and informatics. Scientific
competence will be cultivated in five core areas:
- Agrobiodiversity and genetics
- Ecology and management of pests and diseases
- Soil ecology and improvement
- Spatial analysis
- Socioeconomic analysis
Together, these areas of research will form an enduring institutional framework,
conducive to transdisciplinary research on agricultural productivity, environmental
protection, and community capacity to plan, execute, and monitor innovations. At the same
time, this mix of competencies will give CIAT sufficient scientific flexibility to respond
to an evolving research agenda, including issues of global reach, such as climate change.
Implementing the research agenda
CIAT will implement its 10-year strategy through medium-term plans. Each will cover a
3-year period and respond to emerging trends, problems, and opportunities. Several
policies and principles will guide the setting of our research agendas:
- Research priorities for each region should be harmonized with those of partner groups,
such as national research programs, farmer associations, and community development
organizations.
- Center scientists should maintain close contact with advanced institutes to identify and
acquire relevant new scientific tools, methods, and knowledge.
- Proposed research topics should be directly relevant to the Center’s vision of
sustainable rural livelihoods and its overall mission of alleviating poverty and hunger
and protecting natural resources.
- When activities fall outside the Center’s core scientific competencies, research
partnerships should be formed to secure the necessary expertise.
- Stakeholders’ commitment to invest in research or otherwise contribute resources
should serve as a key indicator of the feasibility of proposed work.
Regional coordinators will help ensure that global and regional research agendas are
harmonized and that scientific outputs complement regional development efforts. The actual
research will be carried out by project-based multidisciplinary teams. CIAT will make
special efforts to obtain funding from nontraditional sources and to actively disseminate
Center products, such as technology and information, to potential users and investors.
Orientation of future research
CIAT’s research program fits into a global context, namely, the work of the Future
Harvest centers supported by the CGIAR. Some of CIAT’s outputs, such as conserved
agrobiodiversity, are essentially global public goods. Work in this and other areas,
however, will continue to be planned in such a way that it complements regional research
agendas.
Several research topics are highly relevant to sustainable rural livelihoods in all
three regions in which CIAT works, namely, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and
Asia. These include the genetic conservation and improvement of cassava and tropical
forages, as well as natural resource management, farmer participatory research methods,
and agroenterprise development.
In the case of natural resource research, soil management and enhancement methods, such
as the use of green manures, will receive special attention. In addition, CIAT will
continue to participate in global efforts to combat whiteflies and to develop geographic
information systems for land management and planning at various physical scales.
Research will also continue on common beans, an important source of daily protein for
millions of small farmers in Latin America and Africa. Emphasis will be put on development
of highly productive climbing beans, improved drought tolerance, and higher iron content
for improved human health. CIAT’s strategy for rice research will, as in the past,
focus exclusively on Latin America. It will aim to make producers more competitive,
improve rice’s disease resistance, and broaden the rice gene pool.
Hillside agroecosystems, particularly in Latin America but also in the uplands of Asia
and the midaltitude areas of eastern, central, and southern Africa, will receive special
attention. This work will build on the orientation of CIAT’s previous strategic plan.
In Latin America, some emphasis will also be given to research on tropical fruits and
on crops, natural resource management, and land use in the Amazon and savanna
agroecosystems.
Future Harvest is a
nonprofit organization dedicated to raising public awareness of the close links between
agriculture and other global issues like peace, economic growth, environmental renewal,
human health, and the size of the world population. It’s sponsored by the 16 food and
environmental centers, including CIAT, that are funded through the CGIAR.
Future Harvest sees itself as a "wake-up call" to a brewing global crisis.
Military conflict, water and land shortages, loss of biodiversity and soil fertility, the
spread of human disease, climate change, poverty, and stagnating crop yields already
threaten the world’s ability to adequately and equitably feed itself. Moreover,
during the next half century, the global population is expected to grow by some
73 million people annually. This addition of more than 3.6 billion people will intensify
pressure on already stressed food-producing ecosystems and on social and political
structures, especially in developing countries.
Future Harvest believes agriculture itself, based on good science, holds solutions to
some of these compelling problems of global reach. International R&D provide
technology and information vital to helping poor farmers boost food production, while
protecting the natural resource base. In turn, these improvements lead to better human
health and nutrition, alleviate poverty, enhance the environment, and stimulate rural
economic progress. Equally important, they create a social and political milieu conducive
to peace and therefore to further improvements in the quality of life.
The organization draws on respected experts, many of them high-profile, to serve as
public advocates for the massive international research effort needed to ensure the world
can feed itself sustainably in the future. Its ambassadors include Archbishop Desmond Tutu
of South
Africa, former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias, Queen
Noor of Jordan, and former US president Jimmy Carter.
In connection with its public awareness, educational, and advocacy roles, Future
Harvest commissions studies that explore the relationship between agriculture and key
global issues. Since the organization was set up in 1998, such studies have examined the
role of agricultural research in reducing conflict, protecting biodiversity, and
mitigating the effects of natural disasters. Similar studies are planned on the topics of
human health and child welfare in the context of agriculture.
Future Harvest promotes a hopeful vision of the future—a "green and
prosperous earth that provides abundance, health, and peace to its peoples." It
cautions, however, that this "can only be realized if we devote attention and
resources to scientific research for food, the environment, and the world’s
poor."
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