ICARDA Caravan 6

n 2 June 1997, ICARDA commemorated its 20th 
anniversary--two decades of grappling with the problems of raising productivity in a fragile environment where drought and heat in summer; freezing cold in winter; shallow, hard-used soils, and scarce and unpredictable rainfall make the life of a farmer harder than anywhere else.
        To mark the occasion, ICARDA held its annual Presentation Day to coincide with the anniversary celebration. A comprehensive program was arranged, which involved visits to field sites and to historic monuments; and a spectacular evening at Aleppo Citadel, where a long and colorful cultural program in the open amphitheater followed a dinner in the magnificent Throne Room itself.
        The Presentation Day was attended by distinguished guests, who were welcomed by  the Syrian Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, H. E. Assad Mustapha, and ICARDA's Board Chairman, Dr Alfred Bronnimann. The Director General, Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy, made a comprehensive and well-illustrated presentation of past achievements and future directions of the Center. A keynote address was given by the Chairman of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), Mr Abdellatif Al-Hamad. Dr Ismail Serageldin, Chairman of the CGIAR, delivered the Anniversary Address. Representatives of donors and cosponsors also participated.
        The Center took the opportunity to honor the founding fathers and the leading figures from ICARDA's early years--and those members of staff who had served the Center for 20 years.

he Green Revolution was not a failure. But there were some things it couldn't do. It's time to update it so that it helps everybody, including the poorest farmers--and is environment-friendly.
        That was part of the message from Dr Ismail Serageldin, Chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which is ICARDA's parent organization.  He was speaking on the occasion of ICARDA's 20th Anniversary on 2 June, when he addressed a distinguished audience of invited guests that included Syrian Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, H.E. Assad Mustapha, former ICARDA Board chairmen and senior representatives of regional and international organizations.
        He argued that the Green Revolution had not actually been a failure as some have suggested. Despite its drawbacks, the Green Revolution in India alone has enabled an increase in production from 87 million tonnes in 1961 to 197 million tonnes in 1995/96, saving at least 300 million hectares of land (an area the size of India itself). This is crucial, because it is now virtually impossible to make a significant impact on agricultural production by bringing more land under cultivation, even assuming that new land was of the same quality as existing farmland (which, as Dr Serageldin pointed out, it would not be). However, the Green Revolution has not reached resource-poor and smallholder farmers. That is what must be done now.
        Dr Serageldin suggested that what we need is a "Doubly Green Revolution" which looks at protecting biodiversity, reducing chemical inputs and other measures to protect and enhance our global natural resource base. While the CGIAR's major priority remains increasing productivity, it is closely followed by protecting the environment and saving biodiversity.
        He also strongly stressed that development must not overlook the countryside and agriculture, and must be targeted at the infrastructure supporting rural development; moreover the approach needed to be holistic. "The issues are not just about production of food," said Serageldin, "but access to it; not just about output, but also about process; not just about technology, but also about policy; not just about global action, but also about impact in nations; and not just about nations, but about impact in the household; not just rural but also urban; and not just about the quantity of food but about its quality."
        In outlining a framework for action, Dr Serageldin emphasised the need to remove the urban bias, for example, in infrastructure investment and health and education services; to move away from centralized, bureaucratic institutions which are distanced from the people, encouraging  decentralized, community organizations including effective local government. Similarly, research organizations need to be responsive to extension needs which are themselves fueled by farmers' needs. Most important is that the poorest of the poor, mostly women,

can get credit through mechanisms and institutions such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
        He spoke, too, about the CGIAR itself. Founded in 1971, it is a group without a formal charter and acts as an umbrella for ICARDA and a number of other Centers, which are autonomous within its framework. It has had an impact out of all proportion to its size.
        "The CGIAR," said Serageldin, "has four great strengths: it is non-political; it is dedicated to excellence; it has a focused agenda; and it has a long-term commitment." Despite its lack of  formal rules and regulations, it has worked so well in promoting agricultural research--and impact--that it has served as a model for collaboration and partnership in other sectors, such as health. Although research by the 16 Centers within the CGIAR represents only 3-4% of the total agricultural research in the developing world, its collaborative approach and its excellence--half of the world food prizes have gone to CGIAR scientists--has had an enormous impact on agriculture and food production worldwide.
        Dr Serageldin congratulated ICARDA on its anniversary and spoke warmly about its achievements; it was, he said, one of the outstanding Centers of the CGIAR. He talked also about ICARDA's fight against desertification and the urgent need to preserve water and soil.
        In so doing, he demonstrated that higher productivity and environmental protection are not necessarily incompatible. He did this by looking at global warming, and some of the work that ICARDA has done on carbon sequestration. ICARDA's research, he explained, had established that careful agronomic practices in fragile environments, coupled with use of crops such as food and feed legumes, could actually increase carbon sequestration; it can also preserve the soil from wind erosion, preventing degradation of steppe and other marginal land which would then cease to act as a carbon sink.
        He highlighted ICARDA's work with medics and vetches, which can achieve this end (see Agriculture--a weapon against global warming in Caravan No.5).

Barley breeder Dr Salvatore Ceccarelli (left) briefs guests on ICARDA's crop-breeding activities.

he Center's 20th Anniversary was an opportunity to review ICARDA's achievements, to draw lessons from past experiences, and to prepare to face future challenges. And this was the theme of  the address delivered by ICARDA's Director General, Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy.
       ICARDA has both regional and global mandates and Prof. Dr El-Beltagy outlined how the Center's programs, past and present, have been developed to meet these mandates. But what impact has the Center's work had over 20 years? In his address, the Director General gave a number of important examples of the impact of ICARDA's research around the world. For example, ICARDA supplies  nearly 2500 sets of international nurseries per year, and as of December 1996 some 442 varieties of ICARDA-mandated crops had been released worldwide. There have been some very significant improvements in production, for example, with wheat in Syria, Tunisia, and Sudan; and with lentil in Sudan and Ecuador; as well as with winter kabuli chickpea and with faba bean in WANA and elsewhere in the world. Multiple resistance has been developed for several diseases in both cereals and legumes, and incorporated into high-yielding cultivars. Protocols have been developed for in-vitro culture for making interspecific hybrids, enabling the transfer of desirable genes from wild relatives of crops to cultivated varieties. About 7500 people from 90 countries (17% of whom are women), including more than 350 post-graduate students, have benefited from the Center's training program. ICARDA has also produced an extensive range of publications for a wide-range of audiences. Not least, ICARDA's gene bank holds about 111,000 accessions or 20% of the CGIAR's total collections, which have been systematically characterized for a number of descriptors, and ICARDA is active in in-situ conservation of plant genetic resources.

      "The Center has worked diligently to forge new partnerships and carefully nurtured them for mutual benefit," said Prof. Dr El-Beltagy. And he stressed, throughout his address, the importance of partnerships in implementing

and continuously developing the Center's program--ICARDA has 80 formal agreements with institutions and organizations throughout the world. He described the six regional programs and the specific problem-oriented networks which operate both within and across programs. And there are always new and exciting challenges, as with the recent collaboration ICARDA has begun with the newly independent republics of Central and West Asia, which are now included within the Center's regional mandate.
       Taking his audience into the future, Prof Dr El-Beltagy introduced new developments and changing emphasis in ICARDA's research programs, as outlined in the Center's recently approved Mid-Term Plan. There will be even greater emphasis on decentralization and farmer-participation in crop improvement, improving water-use efficiency; integrated pest management; rangeland and pastoral systems; the efficiency of feed-resource use and animal products and conserving the natural resources of land, water and agricultural biodiversity. ICARDA will reduce its location-specific experiments in agronomy and soil fertility and emphasize its role in characterization of dry area production systems using simulation models linked to spatially-referenced agroecological databases. Within socioeconomics and policy, particular emphasis will be placed on participatory research techniques that complement the formal methods already used.
       As Prof. Dr El-Beltagy outlined, the strategy is to build upon the knowledge, perspectives and innovative capacities of farmers and local communities in finding solutions to production and resource-management problems. To maintain a critical mass of researchers as a part of ICARDA's strategy to cope with funding uncertainties, the Center will employ Affiliate Research Fellows. These people will be from NARS and will continue to be based in national institutions but will conduct specific components of ICARDA's research agenda. Also, world-renowned scientists will be identified as "mentors" to advise on specific issues.