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Do you want to make agricultural research and innovation more responsive to our future development needs? Join the Global Foresight Hub.
GFAR’s focus is to ensure that agri-food research and innovation – whether through research, extension, education or enterprise - delivers the best development outcomes to resource-poor farmers and rural communities.
As a global forum, GFAR provides the open and inclusive space required for fostering dialogue, agreeing priorities and catalyzing collective actions by the many stakeholders involved in agri-food research and innovation.
Collective Action is a key operational mechanism for the Global Forum.
At the 2015 GFAR Constituent Assembly it was agreed that a GFAR Collective Action is a multi-stakeholder programme of work at national, regional or international level, initiated by three or more partners and prioritized by the Global Forum, always including producers and with a particular focus on women and youth.
Partners agree to commit and generate resources together, in actions or advocacy that strengthen and transform agri-food research and innovation systems towards shared demand-driven development aims and which add value through their joint actions.
The Global Forum's Collective Actions and their outcomes must be publicly recognized as contributing to the objectives of the Global Forum and the GCARD Road Map. Progress must be reported and shared with other partners through the Forum.
GFAR has four core roles:
- Advocacy, to ensure stakeholders’ needs for research and innovation needs are identified and prioritized;
- Partnership, to take collective action to address the complex issues that stand in the way of getting innovation down the pipeline to farmers;
- Capacity-building, to enable national agricultural systems, institutions and people to deliver development outcomes; and
- Knowledge-sharing, to empower stakeholders with the information, skills and technologies they need.
The GCARD Road Map describes the broad changes needed in agri-fodd research and innovation systems as articulated by the sector, while GFAR’s Medium Term Plan sets out the practical actions we are taking collectively through six Work Streams.
Work formulated through consultative processes of the Forum is fostered and sometimes co-financed through the GFAR Secretariat , but is delivered by our constituent partners. Internationally this occurs through the CGIAR, FAO and IFAD and other multilateral agencies and global partnerships for action, and nationally through the diverse actors involved in national systems of agricultural innovation.
Regional Fora co-ordinate national actions and regional initiatives. They are autonomous organisations that have evolved from regional associations of research institutions into multi-stakeholder fora, processes that GFAR is actively helping to foster. They play an important role in identifying common practices across countries with similar cultures and agro-ecosystems, mobilizing partnerships and networked actions and sharing the learning from agricultural research.
GFAR's Six Work Streams
Farmers and rural communities need better foresight of the challenges that lie ahead, so they can ensure agricultural research, innovation, investment and policy are relevant to their needs. Through the Global Foresight Hub, GFAR challenges the present, providing stakeholders with opportunities to undertake forward thinking on current issues in agriculture and rural development. We engage society in shaping their agricultural futures by giving them skills and capabilities in future thinking, and we support them to use those skills to change the future through policy dialogue and debate....
Equitable and effective demand-driven partnerships to transform agricultural research and innovation into meaningful impacts at scale
GFAR is about dialogue and partnership. We are a Global Forum whose reach spans national research systems across the world, and encompasses a broad range of stakeholders in agricultural research, education, extension and enterprise. As a Global Forum we come together to define research and innovation priorities and to take collective action on important development issues such as agro-biodiversity, farmers’ rights, nutrition and climate change. Fostering effective partnerships between national, regional and international agricultural innovation systems is a key focus, and aligning...
Transformative AR4D investments stimulated to provide tangible opportunities for the world’s poor.
To deliver development outcomes at a global scale, more investment in agricultural research and innovation is needed, along with new ways to stimulate income opportunities from innovation for smallholder farmers, through entrepreneurship and public-private investments. The Global Forum is developing a global system for monitoring investments and returns in national systems. We are supporting farmers and civil society to participate in shaping research and advisory processes.
Stimulating...Collective initiatives fostered to improve capacity in agricultural research for development.
The Global Forum is building the essential capacities of people and institutions in agricultural research, education, extension and enterprise within countries, and sharing what we have learned regionally and globally to hasten development. We are ensuring more coherent global action to build institutional capacities through initiatives such as the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP). We are transforming the quality of formal agricultural education and informal learning, and strengthening rural advisory services. GFAR is also drawing on new technologies to improve information management...
Agriculture and innovation is embedded into rural development agendas.
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Accountability, transformational change and development impacts in agricultural research for development systems increased through more effective governance and greater and more transparent stakeholder involvement.
The Global Forum is shaping the global orientation and governance of agri-food research and innovation systems, ensuring greater transparency, accountability and commitment across the sector.
The GCARD process, with its focus on research priorities and partnerships for results, ensures mutual accountability, feedback and learning among GFAR stakeholders. We are strengthening GFAR’s governance; to be more inclusive of all stakeholders, and are supporting Regional Fora so that each becomes a more effective agent of national change and regional collective action. We are...
