In this article, the new Chair and Executive Secretary of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research and Innovation (GFAR) lay out their vision for the Forum in the new context defined by the European Commission’s ‘Development Smart Innovation
through Research in Agriculture’ initiative, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) new Office of Innovation and the UN Food Systems Summit. Convinced that networking with initiatives in the global South is more important than ever in order to support countries and regions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with limited resources and under heavy constraints, they aim to revive the ‘network of networks’ (with over 650 members from the global South) along the following lines:
• For and by small-scale farmers in the global South;
• Bottom-up instead of top-down;
• Innovation-oriented;
• Focussed on achievement of the SDGs;
• Value-based (fair).