The French Presidency of the G20 took the initiative to convene in Montpellier on September 12-13, 2011 a conference on Agriculture Research for Development, promoting scientific partnerships for food security.

This Conference provides a timely opportunity to consider how G20 Agricultural Research Systems can achieve a step-change in supporting development and to consider which actions to take forward in specific regional and inter-regional initiatives.

The main purpose of the first G20 Conference on ARD is to mobilise the G20 capacities in this field to meet the global challenges of scientific partnership for development and food security, with 4 specific objectives:

• To build a mutual knowledge between the G20 agricultural research systems, in order to improve policy coherence through enhanced cooperation and coordination of research policies and programmes on food security.
• To mobilise the G20 agricultural research and knowledge systems to develop effective and innovative research partnerships for development, leverage innovative research results-based mechanisms and enhance the impact of the CGIAR Research Programme (CRP) outcomes.
• To strengthen capacities in agriculture technologies and productive systems for developing countries optimising complementarities and synergies between the G20 agricultural research systems.
• To better involve the G20 agricultural research systems in the design of and participation in the 2nd Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) scheduled in Uruguay in 2012.

Expected outcomes:

• Increased cooperation and coordination of G20 agricultural research systems for development through existing or new mechanisms to improve strategic thinking, research priority setting and mainstreaming of research into agricultural development and food security plans.
• Effective multi-stakeholder research partnerships established to capitalise on the knowledge and expertise of diverse research actors (ie: North-South, South-South and trilateral cooperation) and leverage the private sector for additional investments in agricultural research (ie: pull mechanisms).
• Improved effectiveness and efficiency in capacity-building programmes to generate, share and make use of agricultural knowledge for developing countries through new and existing tools.
• A G20 Vision recognising the development impact and return of agricultural research and supporting the 2012 GCARD in Uruguay.