The GFAR 2006 Triennial Conference at New Delhi from 9th-11th November 2006 was inaugurated by His Excellency Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, President of India. The theme of the Conference was “Reorienting Agricultural Research to meet the Millennium Development Goals”. The theme implicitly questioned the ability of current approaches to agriculture to meet the MDGs, especially those concerned with the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, by 2015, and the maintenance of the world’s natural resources integrity.

The goal of the Conference was to formulate recommendations that would ensure effective and efficient contribution of the agriculture sector towards meeting the MDGs and provide guidelines for the development of research and development activities that GFAR stakeholders will carry out in order to contribute to eradicating hunger and alleviating poverty and ensure sustainability of natural resources.

 

Millions of people in the world are hungry. We have to act as we do not have time. If we do not, generations to come will hold us accountable. To reduce poverty, what we need is appropriate technology-its origin, basic applied or indigenous, is irrelevant. GFAR creates patnerships that bring together stakeholders to reduce poverty and hunger. Dr. Adel El-Beltagy, Chair of GFAR, Opening Ceremony of the GFAR 2006 Triennial Conference

The Conference theme was discussed through three sub-themes: i) New paradigms for the generation and access to agricultural research results; ii) Innovations in Institutional arrangements; and iii) Technologies for emerging societal needs and opportunities

 

Within each theme, discussions centred around three major issues for reorientation: the systems, the Institutions and the technologies that were a product of agricultural research. These had to become more biased towards the poor and the small holder producer, farmer, pastoralist, forester and those involved in fishing and aquaculture if the goals of eradicating hunger and reducing poverty were to be met.
 

The Conference Program included a Keynote address, a Panel Discussion, Sessions that presented and discussed some global ARD related initiatives, presentations on the sub-themes of the Conference, Working Group discussions on some key ARD topics, stakeholder consultations and plenary sessions that discussed and deliberated GFAR’s future action. A poster competition and an exhibition to highlight ARD contribution to meeting MDGs were also organized during the Conference. A Conference Declaration was made at the end of the Conference.
 

The Conference also had pre-events such as the India-GFAR-APAARI day, the CSO consultation, a dialogue of the European Initiative and financial support to ARD. Two initiatives, the New International Partnership to Support Information and Knowledge Systems in Agricultural Science and Technology and the Young Professionals’ Platform for agricultural research for development, were launched at the Conference.
 

The proceedings of the Conference revealed a rich tapestry of new concepts, ideas that ARD can use and direction it may take to effectively and efficiently contribute towards meeting the MDGs. The most important message from the Conference was that ARD has to urgently reorient itself towards becoming more pro-poor and contribute to satisfying the needs of the small producer and the rural poor. The change required is not only in technology and the processes that generate it but goes beyond to the systems that are now in place for agricultural research and Institutions that foster them. There is a need to rethink agricultural development. The paradigm needs to shift from increased production and productivity to how to enable entire agricultural systems to respond to markets, creating sustainable livelihoods in rural areas and conserving valuable natural resources.