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ISPC Commentary on the Synthesis Report for the CGIAR Foresight Study on Trends in Urbanization and Farm Size in Developing Countries : Implications for Agricultural Research

Foresight Studies analyze emerging issues and trends with the objective of quantifying the research challenge and the potential impact for agricultural research. Executive Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations The CGIAR was founded in 1971, when the face of global poverty was that of a semi-subsistence farmer using increasingly scarce land to feed a rapidly growing family. The world's low-income countries all had exploding rural populations which, if not provided with locally-adapted seeds, fertilizer and irrigation, would spread impoverishment and geopolitical instability across Asia, Latin America and Africa. Since then CGIAR centers have spread new techniques and institutions through national research and extension services and all kinds of private-sector agribusinesses to improve food supplies, sharply reducing the extent and depth of poverty around the world in both rural and urban areas. Many of the world's Millennium Development Goals are being met ahead of schedule, as economic growth has brought industrial and service-sector jobs within sight, transformed agriculture and perhaps ended, or at least delayed, the Malthusian threat from declining agricultural land, soils and water per farmer. This report summarizes findings from an ISPC Foresight Study asking what these and other major trends imply for CGIAR agricultural research priorities. The study is based on five background papers reviewed by fifteen discussants and debated over a two-day workshop in January 2013, then revised and synthesized in this document. The workshop agenda and participants are listed at the end of this report, and all workshop presentations are available online at Our deliberations led to the following conclusions and recommendations: (1) Urbanization and economic development have made global agriculture increasingly differentiated, creating new opportunities for millions of farmers in commercially dynamic zones, even as millions more remain isolated in less accessible hinterlands. Heterogeneity is closely tied to gender barriers and social exclusion as well as geographic isolation. Research priorities for the CGIAR must be increasingly tailored to this diversity, helping to spread agricultural dynamism while lifting the productivity of lagging farmers. (2) Agriculturally dynamic zones often extend quite far from towns and cities, along transport routes that carry a " quiet revolution " in the commercialization of crops and livestock. In these areas, farms are served by specialized agribusinesses that exploit scale economies in provision of farm inputs and marketing of farm outputs, even as crop production remains dominated by household enterprises with both farm and nonfarm activities. Research priorities in dynamic zones should recognize …