CGIAR believes the future of resilient food and agriculture systems lies in scientific innovation. But according to the network’s Executive Managing Director Ismahane Elouafi, researchers are facing a particularly “difficult environment.”
CGIAR unites 15 research centers around the globe —collectively employing more than 9,000 scientists, researchers, technicians, and staff—as they work to transform food, land, and water systems. But investment in this work is on the decline, Elouafi reports.
“Really what we are seeing is that hunger is rising, but funding is falling,” Elouafi tells Food Tank. “Everybody should remember that…one in every eleven people globally is going to bed without food and feeling hunger and malnutrition.”
While the recent dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is alarming, Elouafi says that she has been “very concerned” for the last few years, “particularly since COVID started.”
According to a study published in World Development, CGIAR funding peaked in 2014. By 2020, it had declined by more than 25 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
“I think all scientists feel frustrated and feel helpless when they know that they can produce solutions,” Elouafi tells Food Tank, “but they don’t have access to that funding to bring the solutions.”
Elouafi reports that the returns on agricultural research are significant: Every dollar spent yields 10 dollars in return. And it’s more important than ever to invest in innovation and help communities adapt to the climate crisis.
From farmers to urbanites, “every one of us feels it,” Elouafi says. Yields are falling as temperatures rise and droughts become more severe. Producers, particularly small-scale farmers, are struggling with the unpredictability in weather patterns. The fragility is “unprecedented.”
That’s why CGIAR is reaching out to partners and funders, telling them that the pace of progress—and investment—needs to speed up, not slow down.
Despite the challenges, Elouafi still holds onto hope. She believes that if the financing is available, the research centers have cultivated the proper environment “to create those breakthroughs and the innovation that can help us.”
As part of the network’s new five year research portfolio, they are working to facilitate knowledge sharing even more effectively through the cultivation of stronger relationships. Elouafi reports greater collaboration between the Global South and Global North and, particularly in the last two decades, “a surge of South-South collaboration.” CGIAR’s programs connect researchers and farmers in, for example, Morocco and Ethiopia, Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast, the African continent and China, and Brazil and Africa.
And none of this work can advance without engaging farmers directly. “I think CGIAR, be it in our breeding program, be it in our policy work, be it in our data generation work, we have been really engaging the stakeholders at large, but particularly the farmers,” Elouafi tells Food Tank. And producers’ input isn’t simply taken for consideration. Rather, it’s used to inform new innovations that match the context they’re developed for.
“We don’t know what we cannot see and we need farmers’ experience over decades, over generations. It’s super important.”
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Dr. Ismahane Elouafi to hear more about the current funding landscape for agricultural research, why a critical mass is needed to unleash the power of science, and where CGIAR is finding success.
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Photo courtesy of the World Bank
