r Earl D. Kellogg is Senior Vice- President of Winrock International, a non-governmental organization (NGO) committed to sustainable development, which has offices in 17 countries and manages projects in 35. Having studied at Michigan State University, he taught at the University of Illinois from 1970 to 1985; during this period he spent two years in Thailand with the Ford Foundation. He has been involved with different development institutions and projects in 12 countries, as diverse as Bahrain and Trinidad. He has written a number of books on agricultural economics and global agricultural development. He decided to discuss with ICARDA staff the issues he heard talked about in the offices of donors such as USAID, the World Bank and others in Washington D.C.
        Dr Kellogg described how, at dinner with representatives of a donor agency recently (he did not specify which one), he had asked them, point-blank, why support for agricultural research was declining. "They could have avoided the question, or argued that they did have it as a high priority," he said. "But they didn't. They gave me straightforward answers." They gave four main reasons.
* ICARDA's own view may be that there will be a desperate food and feed gap by 2020--but to many senior officials in the donor community, there did not appear to be any crisis. There were no starving people on the television screen right now, at least not on the scale that there were a few years ago. In fact, food prices seemed actually to be declining in the long-term.
* Many agricultural projects had, they said, almost always performed badly. Why? Dr Kellogg asked them. They said that their own research staff had found relatively low rates of achievement of objectives.
* There is no political clout behind agricultural research; boards of agencies and congressmen put stress on environment and health. Moreover, there was a feeling that more efficient agriculture worldwide could actually hit the exports of already-developed countries.
* The donors perceived that agriculture had become less important in development, with many people moving to the cities.
        "I'm not here to refute all of these, but we in the

business of agricultural development do have to be ready to refute these criticisms," said Dr Kellogg. "We've lost ground because we have not kept up with the changing priorities of the agencies." Instead, we talked about the shortfall in food supply; but that alone just wasn't working any more. Instead, he looked at what the goals of donors actually are today, and found five main ones.
        "First of all, economic growth. Everyone wants that. Second, environmental protection; they want to see the production base maintained and sustained. Third, health and population. Fourth, poverty alleviation. And fifth, democratization--increasing participation.
        "No one puts agriculture there. What are we going to do about it?"
        First, growth. Agriculture might be declining, but it's still the biggest sector and the one in which demand must be created for overall growth. It will also be where investment capital and foreign exchange can be obtained. As to environmental protection, of course agriculture is significant. Its implications for soil, water and forestry are obvious.
        With regard to health and population, health was related to nutrition; people cannot be healthy if they don't have an adequate diet. Agriculture provides the food. And with regard to population planning, there was evidence that fertility levels could drop quickly in some countries--but only when women can obtain employment and income. Agriculture is a big employer. Moreover, the dry areas in particular were significant. If food production was really to be increased by 250% by 2020, it would be necessary to turn to areas that were not already at their limit of productivity--that means dry areas.
        On the poverty alleviation priority, the dryland areas, he said, contained real poverty. It is important to reduce poverty in order to allow people to realize their true potential. "Poverty in rural areas is more prevalent than in the urban areas; the worst incidence of poverty is in the countryside, and if you can increase farm incomes, you can reduce poverty. In any case, if you increase production you reduce food prices, which are a big percentage of the spending of the urban poor also. We need to find new off-farm jobs for rural people; there's a need for important rural infrastructure projects."