The Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR) is a joint undertaking by all
stakeholders of ARD to mobilise the global scientific community in order to address the three major
challenges of rural poverty alleviation, achieving food security and assuring a sustainable
management of the environment. In the development and strengthening of a Global Agricultural
Research System (GARS) all stakeholders participate very actively in this process at the national,
regional and global levels (NARS, IARCs, NGOs, ARIs, farmers¿ organisations, the private sector
and donors). Within this context, global activities are being carried out through an increasingly
diversified range of research partnerships, in which three modes of collaboration play a key role:
(a) international centres with a global mandate, (b) inter-regional cooperation between National
Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) and other stakeholders of agricultural research for
development (ARD) through various forms of research partnerships, and (c) global programmes and
networks that emerge in specific areas of research. The first mode of collaboration is basically
constituted by the research centres of the CGIAR and a few more cases of international centres that
also have a global mandate. International centres have played an important role in the process of
building a GARS through the quality research they have produced since they were established. But
in the globalised world of today the other two modes of collaboration are playing an increasingly
important role as part of the process of the globalisation of science. One of the objectives of GFAR
is to facilitate the participation of NARS and of other stakeholders in inter-regional research
partnerships through their respective Regional Fora (second mode), and in promoting the emergence
of global programmes in key strategic areas of agricultural research (third mode).