• Building on the NARS-CGIAR Partnerships for a

Doubly Green Revolution: A Framework for the IFAD-Led

Initiative

Uma Lele Advisor

Agricultural Research Group Environmentally Sustainable Development

The World Bank

A Paper Prepared for the Meeting on Strengthening NARS-CGIAR Partnerships:

NARS Outline Action Plan

Washington, D.C. October 28, 1995

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Pages

Executive Summary I-Xl

1. The Changing Global Context for Agricultural Research 1

2. The Scope of the Paper 5

3. Outline of the Paper 6

4. Key Principles ofResearch Organization and Partnerships 6

5. Sequences of Technological Changes, Content and Organization of Research 9 5.A The Crucial Role ofNARS 15

6. The Global Research System 15 6A. NARS ofIndustrial Countries 19

(i) Universities 20 (ii) Foundations and Small Donors (e.g., IDRC) 22 (iii) The Tropical Research Organizations of

Industrial Countries 24 (iv) Other Regional Organizations 24

6B. Developing Countries' NARS 25

6C. The Emerging Regional Organizations 25 (i) Past Experience with Regional Cooperation 27 (ii) Managing Regional Research Priorities 28 (iii) Past Experience with Farming Systems Research 28 (iv) The Needfor Political Commitment at the Top 29 (v) Engagement ofthe Grassroots 29

6D. The CG Centers 30

7. The Seven Levels of Current NARS-CGIAR Interactions 31 7A. Need for Dialogue at Policy-Making Levels 33

8. Funding ofNars 33 8A. National Funding 33 8B. Global Actors in Funding 34 8C. Patterns ofWorld Bank and Related Donor Funding 36 8D. Optimally Comgining Domestic with Donor Funding 39 8E. A Proposal for Developing a New Complementary

40Funding Mechanism to Existing Ones

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9. NARS Research Policy and Management 41 9A. Priority Setting in NARS 43

10. Summary ofRecommendations 45

Diagrams

l. 17 2. 18

Figures

l. Regional Share of the Global Poor 14 2. Regional Distribution ofWorld Bank 1988-1994 Dollars

Commitments to Agriculture 37 3. Regional Distribution ofWorld Bank 1988-1994 Dollars

Commitments to Agricultural Research 37 4a. Research Projects: Regional Financing Patterns 38 4b. PSARP: Regional Financing Patterns 38 5. Main World Recipients ofAgricultural Research Commitments 39 6. Typologies of Agro-Ecologically Based Commodity Systems 43

Tables

l. Regional Comparison Development Indicators 3 2. Size ofNARS Regional Comparison 4

Bibliography

DRAFT (for discussion only)

October 24, 1995

Building on the NARS-CGIAR Partnerships for a Doubly Green Revolution:

A Framework for the IFAD-Led Initiativel 2

UmaLele Advisor

Agricultural Research Group Environmentally Sustainable Development

The World Bank

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Background and Purposes of this Paper

The NARS declaration in Rome in an IF AD-led consultation in December 1994 "urged that the National Research Systems (NARS) of developing countries have a larger voice in the CGIAR's global and regional fora and the CGIAR priority setting". Further it called for "an energetic follow-up by the cosponsors (namely the World Bank, UNDP, F AO and UNEP) to evolve specific mechanisms and modalities to operationalize partnerships and provide support for capacity building." The IFAD-Ied initiative emerged in the context of the CGIAR's renewal process and was endorsed by the Ministerial level meeting hosted by the chairman of the CGIAR in February 1995 in Lucerne. The Lucerne meeting further recommended that "the process of systematizing participation by NARS of developing countries in setting and implementing the Group's agenda be accelerated".

1 A paper prepared for the IF AD initiative on building NARS-CGIAR partnerships.

2 I am grateful to Wanda Collins, Michael Collinson, Franz Heidhues, Alexander McCalla, Marie-Helene Collion, Moctar Toure, Selcuk Ozgediz, Peter Pee, Michel Petit, Henri Rouille d'Orfeuil, Shiv Saigal, Ravi Tadvalkar and Alexander von der Osten for stimulating comments on the earlier draft of this paper. Marie-Laure Lajaunie provided research assistance, and Coral D'Monte and Catherine Guie typing assistance. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, the CGIAR or IF AD.

IF AD announced that a specific action plan to do so is being prepared by the NARS and representatives of the CGIAR and will be presented at the ICW 1995. (The Users' Perspective, by Fawzi H. Al-Sultan, President ofIFAD.)

Since then IF AD has been exploring ways to proceed with the development of proposals on the mechanism and an associated plan of action. (Mr. Saigal's letter of April 18th, 1995). IFAD's aim is to focus on developing mechanisms to increase:

1. NARS's role in research priority setting of: • the CGIAR centers; and • the TAC;

2. devolution of responsibilities to NARS, including ensuring funding support to the NARS;

3. partnerships and networking between the CG centers and NARS in the ecoregional research spelling out substantive tasks and responsibilities--as distinct from simply attendance ofNARS in meetings;

4. institutional and capacity building support to the NARS from the CG system and from the more advanced NARS, including training and retraining;

5. strengthening NARS-CGIAR partnerships; and

6. shift of the renewal process to the NARS themselves.--(Mr. Saigal's letter of April 18th, 1995).

At the Nairobi mid-term meeting of the CGIAR in May 1995 IF AD proposed a two-day workshop and the development of an action plan for presentation at the MTM 1996.

The Problem

There is already rich experience on several of the issues the IF AD-led initiative proposes to address. That experience relates to two distinct sets of questions:

• those related to "what to research", and, • those related to the forms of organization for research.

A part of this experience is well documented. Other can be tapped relatively quickly. What exists suggests a mixed record ofNARS-CGIAR partnerships both as regards the content of research and the organizational forms for the conduct of that research. The experience also raises several complex and interrelated questions both as to the kinds of research and the kinds of organizational forms that would be appropriate for

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future research. Yet it is rarely that the relationship between the types of research and the appropriate forms of organization for that research gets explored. Without exploring that relationship there is a risk ofmoving ahead on form without content, or on research problems without the appropriate organizational forms and levels to conduct research effectively. Addressing both these issues simultaneously is clearly not easy, and that is perhaps why it does not get done often, but that is also where there are the greatest returns to be realized. The IF AD-led initiative can make important contributions to the global research strategy by improving our understanding of this relationship and its implications for policy and strategy.

As a member of the working group I suggested in Nairobi that the past experience and the new research issues (e.g., ecoregional research) as well as the new organizational forms being developed (e.g., regional organizations) be reviewed simultaneously through a broad new perspective in a systematic comparative and historical context, so as to understand ingredients of past successes and failures and implications for the design of a future Action Plan. The working group commenced work on these issues following the Nairobi meeting and will meet in Washington during ICW 1995 to plan the course of action in the coming year.

The Scope of This Paper

This paper is intended to provide a framework including an overview of the issues both with regard to some of the major issues of research substance and the organizational forms as they might affect the NARS-CGIAR partnerships. It provides a variety of questions and hypotheses to be explored in the case studies. The paper assumes that as proposed in Nairobi, the case studies would be carried out in all developing regions in view of their diverse circumstances, i.e., in East and South Asia, Latin America, l\1ENA and Africa. Their purpose would be to clearly capture both the region specific and systemwide implications of the experience to date, and to do so both with regard to the content and the organization ofresearch. The purpose would be to provide input into the design of the IF AD-led Action Plan.

Key Concepts on Which the Paper Relies

What might constitute "success" ofNARS, NARS and CGIAR partnerships and the regional fora? A consensus on this issue seems essential to the success of the IFAD-Ied initiative.

A recent "stripe review" of the CGIAR's role in the development ofNARS carried out by TAC, (the so-called Nickels study) identifies six aspects of research as being crucial for NARS' success. They focus mainly on the research process, namely,

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• research policy • priorities • program development • resource allocation • program execution and • monitoring and evaluation.

The Nickels study suggests that strong NARS are those that carry out all six aspects of research effectively, and respond quickly to the changing internal and external environment.

While accepting this view as a useful beginning there are four respects in which this framework paper differs in emphasis from the stripe study with regard to research organization, research content and its impact, namely, in its treatment of the:

• External and Internal Environment for Research. The stripe study assumes it as exogenously given. This paper explores the role that the IF AD-led initiative and the cosponsors and stakeholders of the CGIAR system might play in influencing that environment since it affects levels ofresources to and productivity ofthe research system;

• Financing. This paper explores how financing might be improved both in making more effective uses of international finance for agricultural research and development, and in improving domestic resource mobilization by NARS in developing countries;

• The Roles of Organizations Other than the CGIAR Centers and NARIS, including particularly the research organizations of industrial and the advanced developing countries and institutions within developing countries. This paper argues that with its small resources (only 4 percent of the global research expenditures, and only about 1,000 scientists) and many, varied and often pressing demands made on it in terms of research results, ( and the frequent shifts in donor expectations e.g., from crop improvement research to research on resource management), the CGIAR cannot be expected to be the only, or indeed even a primary source ofNARS capacity building. That task is large, long term and complex and its scope by necessity is larger than the CGIAR's primary charge, namely to conduct research which has potential for the widest applicability. The paper gives reasons why universities and institutions of industrial and developing countries, foundations, and so on must become important complementary inputs to build NARS capacity in a well coordinated manner at the international level. Such broader explicit participation will also influence research content and implementation and particularly the pace ofits adoption in developing countries.

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From the perspective of ensuring adoption the paper also makes the case for a stronger cooperation between the CGIAR centers and donor programs. The paper demonstrates what an important source offinance donors constitute both for agricultural research and development) and therefore as a means of spreading the impact ofthe CGIAR technologies. That source now remains grossly underutilized.

• Issues Related to What Research to Conduct and Its Impact: at least three kinds of research seem typically to get considered:

• commodity research, • research on resource management, and • research which integrates commodity and resource management

research.

Within commodity research, whether to focus on improvement of individual crops, cropping systems (groups ofcrops typically grown together); or farming systems (including crops and livestock); and the level at which to focus the research, e.g., whether at the farm level; or in internally homogenous relatively different prototype agroecosystems--e.g., in the upland and lowland rice areas ofAsia; or to conduct research in agroecosystems which are highly heterogeneous internally as for instance the farming areas ofWest Africa ..

Within resource management, whether to focus on individual resources, e.g., the management of soils, water etc., or the interaction between them, e.g., in the rice wheat systems, and the level ofaggregation at which that research should be conducted, e.g., at the level of the farm, watersheds or agroecosystems which cut across several national boundaries.

Finally, there are the issues of the relative returns to research, both private and social on commodities, resource management and those which attempt to integrate both types ofresearch.

Those returns may be influenced by national boundaries, as policies and institutions differ substantially across countries, but may also involve substantial spill-in and spill-over benefits across national boundaries (e.g., by the transfer of technologies developed in area A which are transferred to B, or which are useful after doing applied and adaptive research in specific locations):

Research may be carried out at basic, strategic, applied or adaptive levels. • Basic research involves search for knowledge and understanding of the basic

organisms, functions or physical phenomena. • Strategic research is mission oriented intended to solve specific problems at

the level ofbroad application over several disciplines, geographical areas etc. • Applied research adapts basic and strategic research to solve field problems

or needs, e.g., overcoming lack ofresistance to major local pests.

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• Adaptive research involves adjustment of technology to meet specific well identified needs of client groups.

A size of the research system and the history of past research will determine the extent to which, and the time period in which, national research systems climb the ladder of adaptive to basic research. Small research systems ofpoor developing countries may be able to do no more than adaptive and applied research. Research systems of large countries or richer countries may do all levels ofresearch.

There is great variability among NARS not just in terms of size, but the extent to which research organizations successfully conduct adaptive and applied research.

Few other concepts are ofrelevance in determining an appropriate organization for research: Economies of scale and scope.

Scale economies occur when the unit costs decline with increase in the units of output produced. Advanced research in biotechnology may call for investment in laboratories which small poor cQuntries may not be able to afford.

Scope economies occur when the cost ofproducing two products in combination is smaller than the cost of producing each separately. e.g., assessing the impact of cropping patterns on soil fertility may be cheaper to conduct when research is simultaneously underway on crop productivity than when each type of research is done separately. By the same token spreading the scope ofresearch to two issues rather than one in a small research system may result in Scope diseconomies, i.e., production exigencies may stretch investments in one kind of research at the expense ofa previous one, depleting the efficiencies derived from specialization.

Public goods characteristics of research. Research has public goods characteristics when:

• costs are difficult to recover from the beneficiaries • there are substantial spillover benefits to third parties • long gestation lags occur before benefits are realized.

Whereas private sector research is acquiring increased importance, public sector research will remain an important source of technology for developing countries for a long time to come due to the public goods nature ofmuch of the technology. Therefore public funding ofresearch needs much greater attention than it has received to date.

International research system such as the CGIAR may intentionally undertake research which has substantial scope for spillover benefits. In the case ofnational research systems, even if they are publicly funded, while spillover benefits may also result, particularly to countries and regions of the world where there is very little such research,

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research priorities will be determined by the clients within the country's borders as the only way ofgenerating and maintaining political and financial support for research .. Questions may arise as to why country X should undertake research, large benefits of which accrue to country Y. Formation of regional organizations may overcome these problems of scale and scope economies and spillover benefits to an extent, nevertheless the benefits of research may go no further than the region in which research was undertaken without participation of actors such as the CGIAR centers whose mission it is to spread the benefits of research as widely as possible.

Research impact is determined by the extent to which the generated technologies are adopted by farm families. That in turn is a function both of the technology itself, as well as policies, investment in infrastructure, markets for inputs and outputs and . institutions, e.g., security ofproperty rights, extension, information and so on.

Given the financial pressures and the call for increased impact, considerations of what to research and its likely impact which already enter into the work programs of individual centers and rAC should become a far more important criterion in the CGIAR's strategy on research partnerships with the NARS and regional organizations in the future. That will in all likelihood entail entering into active partnerships not just with the NARS, but mth other relevant partners that can influence both the content and the impact of research so as to develop a much more client oriented technology, particularly as it moves down the ladder, closer to the farmer. This implies involving policymakers at the highest level of the government to ensure consistent funding for research and policies for adoption as well as farmers' organizations to better tailor research to the clients' needs.

The issues for the IF AD-led process therefore focus on:

• whose research agenda should be pursued, i.e.,

1. at the international level, how should the CGIAR reconcile its global mandate to produce research results which mIl benefit the largest number ofultimate beneficiaries through their more immediate clients, namely the NARS of developing countries, vis-a.-vis meeting the needs of the individual regions and countries;

2. within developing countries and regions, how should client orientation be institutionalized in priority setting and the conduct of research on a routine basis.

• who will pay for the increased partnerships, how, for how long and what implications does that have for developing a stable, predictable and long term base of national and international funding,

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• how should governance of the partnerships be set up in terms of the level and the appropriateness of representation of the actual stakeholders at each level, i.e., the national, regional and the international levels,

• how should industrial countries be brought to bear as partners in research and development, i.e., as sources of state of the art science when science itself is advancing rapidly, research capacity, training of developing countries' human capital, and in the renewal of the NARS and the CGIAR system generally through increased scientific collaborations rather than just as funders;

• the role of the advanced developing countries many of whom have been spectacularly successful in agricultural research and development, in strengthening their smaller and weaker counterparts.

Major Themes of the Paper

In Section 1 of the paper the changing global context and the growing differentiation among developing countries are reviewed together with the various criteria for undertaking international research of a public goods nature compared to national research. The paper argues that investment in agricultural research and technology by the countries themselves, together with the characteristics of particular technologies which enabled successful international technology transfers explains in part the growing differentiation among countries. Technology characteristics should playa role in organizing research.

It further argues that investment in research while necessary is not sufficient. Not only was there greater investment in technology in Asia, but policies, investments (e.g., in irrigation) and institutions (e.g., a relatively egalitarian land distribution system) supportive of agriculture increased the impact of technology.

Moreover technological problems ofrice and wheat were particularly suited to international research. They enabled realization of economies of scale enabling varietal improvements to be applicable on a wide scale, and international research to be effective. National research systems too were active in conducting adaptive research, providing a clear case for a division of labor between international and national research. The more recent post-Green Revolution problems in Asia call for multidisciplinary Systems Research and stress the need for international research as well as clear partnerships and division of labor between international, regional and national research.

The situation seems more complex in the case of crops grown under more diverse and more risk prone conditions where crop improvement research enjoys fewer economies of scale, and requires substantial location-specific adaptive research. Not only does this pose complex problems for "international research" making commodity improvement research more intertwined with research on natural resource management, but it also calls

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for far more applied and adaptive research, in the context of the characteristics of the particular physical and biological environments. The lack of obvious scale economies makes the problem of the division oflabor between strategic and applied/adaptive research more problematic, making particular demands on distinguishing strategic from applied and adaptive research. In view of its diseconomies, there is no reason why such research cannot in principle be carried out by the NARS and regional organizations. However, many of them lack the multidisciplinary and particularly the social science expertise and analytical tools to undertake the necessary research. The questions discussed are how and how fast to build it.

Returns to research have been generally high, but it is the relative return between commodity and natural resource management which is of interest and particularly the allocation between the two at the international, regional and the national levels. There appears to be strong consensus that returns to crop improvement research have tended to be high even in risky environments, establishing a clear case for international research. Less of a professional consensus seems to exist on the past returns to research (defined broadly to mean impact) on natural resource management and particularly on the comparative advantage of the international relative to national and regional research organizations in conducting it. International research seems justified only when it brings a strategic dimension to bear, e.g., in methodological or multidisciplinary sense.

Evidence suggests that past international research may at times have been more a substitute for NARS research ofapplied and adaptive nature in risky environments such as those found in semi-arid areas ofAfrica or Asia.

These various pieces of evidence raise important allocative issues, both about the balance ofcommodity and resource management research and international and national (or regional as appropriate) research.

That knowledge should influence in which regions and which specific countries in the region future research should be focused by the CGIAR, if investment in technology is to have greater impact on the farmers' fields. Section 1 ends by stressing why the NARS have a central role to play in increasing factor productivity in a sustainable manner, but why division of research responsibilities and organization of research between national, regional and international research is complex in less controlled environments with many divisibilities and in countries ofdifferent sizes and degrees of development.

Section 2 explores the strengths of the various current and potential research partners in the global research system, given the small size of the CGIAR, e.g., universities of industrial and developing countries, private foundations, the tropical research institutes of industrial and the more advanced developing countries etc. The US alone undertakes annual investments in agricultural research ofnearly $6 billion, nearly a third of those through the public sector, and a large share of it through land grant universities. There are 23,000 Ph.D.s directly supporting and 45,000 Ph.D.s working indirectly in agricultural research related fields. Land grant universities are also the major source ofgraduate

IX

education including the supply of state of the art science for one third of the developing countries' graduates educated abroad. Clearly the potential to use land grant institutions as a source of research, education and extension has been grossly underutilized.

France alone has a tropical research system larger than the CGIAR system.

The Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations bring to bear cutting edge science to grassroots issues in a flexible, non-bureaucratic and competitive manner.

Within developing countries, the involvement of universities is a neglected area. Briefly, the purpose of this section is to stress that the CG-NARI centric view of technology generation and adoption is inappropriate in a period of resource crunch and advancing science.

In Section 3, the seven levels ofNARS-CGIAR interactions are explored. The main argument in this section is that scientific interactions are strong in Asia, but organizational forms have lagged behind. The reverse is perhaps true in Africa. The challenge is to reach a more appropriate balance between research content and research organization.

Several current forms of interactions between the CG centers and NARS are discussed. Some seem formalistic rather than substantive. Substantial scope exists to revamp the representation ofNARS in the CG fora both in scale and content to help it advance partnerships in the substance and organization of research. However, there is also a note ofcaution. Excellent research partnerships and networks have existed between the CGIAR centers and NARS in Asia mainly due to the strong NARS and supportive domestic agricultural policy environment even without formal fora. The establishment of regional fora are more advanced in Latin America and Africa, and yet research partnerships with the CGIAR centers in the conduct of science seem weak. Organizational efforts can outpace the content of research partnerships unless steps are taken to avoid this outcome.

Section 4 explains why research priorities ofNARS by necessity have to be much broader than those of the CGIAR centers, e.g., involving both food and nonfood crops, so as to meet food security as well as resource management objectives. But NARS set their priorities at a lower level of aggregation with a much greater focus on applied and adaptive research than is the case with the CGIAR centers. These differences will pose problems for the extent to which NARS can playa role in defining the priorities of the CGIAR centers and particularly the T AC whose mandates are global. However, they can and must playa greater role in defining regional priorities.

An important issue seems to be that many particularly small NARS, including e.g., in Africa, but also those in Asia facing risky and diverse production environments appear not to have been able to conduct sufficient applied and adaptive research, with the result that the CGIAR centers have become substitutes for rather than complements to NARS in

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the conduct of research, in the same way that donors appear to have become substitutes for domestic research funding. NARS will need to take greater responsibility for the conduct of applied and adaptive research in the future. Second, while CGIAR's ecoregional approach to research goes some way in incorporating a broader scope of research, it does not go far enough. Hence the need for the inclusion of other partners who address issues of traditional and nontraditional high value crops, those ofresearch outreach and so on. The section argues that inclusion of these various actors in the NARS-CGIAR dialogue may well change research priorities and the pace and the quality ofresearch implementation as well as its impact. Those other actors will not only bring to bear different focus on research than the CGIAR centers, but substantial resources of the global research system to address the challenge ofbuilding NARS and increasing their impact. Moreover, by becoming active stakeholders they will help mobilize constituencies for additional research support to developing countries in the future.

Section 5 argues that long term consistent domestic funding of research is crucial to the long run success of research and its impact. Currently small poor countries, particularly in Africa are overwhelmingly dependent on donor assistance. The section discusses patterns of donor funding including the new innovative mD proposal for research funding. It argues that external funding, including for regional fora, can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand it enables conduct ofmore research than would occur otherwise. On the other it can become a substitute for domestic finance, as well as leading to instability and unpredictability in funding, and accountability to donors rather than farmers. The section provides a proposal for national funding ofresearch complementary to that of the IDB funding for regional research, bringing to bear both greater farmer responsiveness and science qUality.

Finally the paper argues that there may be much merit in linking CGIAR-NARS partnerships to donor funded research and development projects as a way of accelerating their impact. In 1988-1994, the World Bank alone had research components and self standing agricultural research projects worth $2 billion in well over 60 countries. Sixty percent of the self standing research projects were in Africa. The Bank's $25 billion agricultural lending portfolio during the same period in well over 90 countries involved $50 billion of agricultural projects related investments when cofinancing by other donors and developing countries is factored in. These investments do not include assistance by other donors and investments by developing countries in their own agricultural research and development. Together these investments offer a tremendous scope for the NARS-CGIAR partnerships to increase research quality and impact.

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DRAFT (for discussion only)

October 24, 1995

Building on the NARS-CGIAR Partnerships for a Doubly Green Revolution:

A Framework for the IFAD-Led Initiative3 4

UmaLele Advisor

Agricultural Research Group Environmentally Sustainable Development

The World Bank

1. THE CHANGING GLOBAL CONTEXT FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

Developing countries' food needs are expected to double in the next quarter century. That level is three times the size of the current U.S. harvest. Even under the best of circumstances, the U.S. and other industrial countries will not be able to feed the world. Food imports ofdeveloping countries are already large and are now the primary stimulus to global agricultural trade. But developing countries will not be able to import more food commercially unless they have import capacity. That capacity depends critically on developing exports to pay for the much needed imports.

At an early stage of development when a large portion of the GNP and eexports come from agriculture, agricultural development must be the primary source of export growth. NAFTA, GATT and economic liberalization throughout the developing world provide new opportunities for trade expansion. But the capacities of developing countries to take advantage of those opportunities depends critically on their ability to make

3 A paper prepared for the IF AD initiative on building NARS-CGIAR partnerships.

4 I am grateful to Wanda Collins, Michael Collinson, Franz Heidhues, Alexander McCalla, Marie-Helene Collion, Moctar Toure, Selcuk Ozgediz, Peter Pee, Michel Petit, Henri Rouille d'Orfeuil, Shiv Saigal, Ravi Tadvalkar. and Alexander von der Osten for stimulating comments on the earlier draft ofthis paper. Marie-Laure Lajaunie provided research assistance, and Coral D'Monte and Catherine Guie typing assistance. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, the CGIAR or IF AD.

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technological progress. For population growth has exhausted the extensive margin in many countries. Agricultural intensification based on liberal use of modem inputs has contributed to resource shortages and posed new environmental challenges in increasing production and productivity. Clearly agricultural research systems of developing countries must playa central role in increasing productivity in a sustainable manner, singly, jointly with their neighboring countries and in collaboration with the international research centers of the CGIAR.

But what should they research? How should research be organized among the various actors? How should partnerships be developed among developing countries and international organizations? What role should regional organizations play? And even more importantly what should be the relationship of the content of research with the nature of the research organization (see Lipton and Evenson)?

These are complex issues with a long history of both research programs and organizing principles. But the rapid changes in circumstances are posing new questions. For instance: to what extent should we project from the past, or explore new higher priority research issues as well as new more effective organizing principles? Clearly we must view past experience in a new context. The importance of these issues is increased by the fact that in some respects developing countries are far more diverse today than they were when the CGIAR system was established in 1972 to bring new technology to the pressing food problems of small farmers. Moreover our understanding of the similarities and differences among them, and particularly their implications for the content and the organization of research has grown. For instance scale economies occur in certain kinds of research, but less in the case of others with implications for research organization.

From this perspective East Asia has three to four times, and South Asia nearly two to three times, the size of the populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America Regions respectively (see table 1). China's agricultural research establishment in the mid 1980s was already more than six times that of 43 countries in the African continent ( see table 2).

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Tiahi 1 : ReglOnaIeomparlson: Deve opment Lnd'lcatorse I SSA EAP SAS LAC MNA ECA TOTAL

POPULATION Population (millions) mid-1993 559 1,713.90 1,194.40 466.3 262.5 494.6 4690.7 Population % mid-1993 of developing regions 1:20/0 37% 25% 10010 6% 11% 100% Population (millions) 2025 83 1,988 709 507 553 6723 Population %2025 of developing regions I 10010 34% 300/0 11% 8% 8% 100%

2.90%Population grOV\th 1980-93 3% 0.80% Population grOV\th 93-2000

1.SOOA I 210010 :2010 2.90% 1.20010 2.20010 2.50% 0.40%1.60010

30010 31%Urban pop: % of total pop 1993 26% 71% 55% 65% Urban pop: av. ann grOV\th rate 1980-93 4.2OOA 3.30% 2.700/0 1.70%4.80010 4.10010

POVERTY GNP per capita $ 1993 520 310 2,950 ... 2,450 GNP per capita avg. ann. grOV\th 80-93 -0.800/0 6.40010 3% -0.100/0 -0.30010-2.40010 Nb of poor (WBR 1990) millions 216 169 108 73 5562 1,133

GLOBAL ECONOMIC DATA GOP millions $1993 269,414 1,285,142 313,869 1,400,254 ... 1,094,235 GOP 1980-93 av ann grCMth rate % 1.600/0 7.80010 5.200/0 1.90% 2.20010 0.40010

AGRICULTURE IN THE ECONOMY GOP agriculture 1980-93 av ann grOV\th ! 1.70010 4% 4. -0.20% % GDP agriculture 1993

3.100/0 2100/0 17% 30010 ...200/0 ... ...

14,945 50,344 32,720 20,444 ... ... Value added in agriculture 1993 Value added in agriculture 1980

54,381 94,968 ...219,191 ... ...

FOOD NEEDS Cereal imports (thousands t) 1993 13,157 30,036 6,211 27,700 38,092 34,452 149648 Cereal imports % 1993 4%9% 20% 19% 1000/0 Cereal imports (thousandst) 1980

25%[ 23% 8,647 26,646 4,211 24,557 15,752 105595

Cereal imports % 1980 8% 25% 4% 23% 15% 100010~ 1,535Food aid in cereals (thousand t) 1980 1,601 2,339 ... ... ... 391 1,783 1,595Food aid in cereals (thousand t) 89/90 2,677 2,264 2,373 11083

16% 14%24% 4% 20010 21% 100010 Food aid in cereals (thousand t) g)f93 Food aid in cereals % 89/90

5,079 447 1,624 1,565 ... 4,392

NATURAL RESOURCES DATA Area (1000 km2) 24,274 16,369 20,507 11,015 24,242 101540 Area %

5,133 16% 5% 20% 10001024%

4 49.019.55 43.98 21.65 Fert. oons. (1ocgtha of arable land) 79/80 Area per capita (1000 m2) 43.42 4.30

138 346 542 38091,079 H9% 11% 34%4% 28% 14% 100010Fert. oons. % 79/80

570737 524I 64'1 4676 Fert. oons. % 92/93

149 2,055Fert. oons. (100gfha of arable land) 92/93 12%3% 44% 16% 11% 14% 100010

Source: World Bank Development Indicators 1995

3

I I

Table 2 Size ofNARS : Regional Comparison

!,:~-!a~4~an

"chi~~""''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

'A;i;&P;~ifi~;"~i'a"'"

.... r of full-time-equivalent researchers Agricultural Research Expenditures (millionl 1980 PPP dollars per year)

1961-65

1,323

1966-70

1,841

1971-75

2,416

1976-80

3,526

1981-85

4,941

1961-65 1 1966-70

149.5 I 227.2

1971-75

276.9

1976-80I 359.1

1981-85

372.3

···..6:·966······1······9':9·00·..···I·····11·;5·63....t·..·2·0·:048··..~···..3·2:·224·......··271:·4....t·..·..296:2'···..(····485·.·4······t.. ·· .. 6·89:3....··'t·····933·::7~·· ..·

···..6:64'i'···..!......9·;4·so····..!·....12":439··..f....·ii,'5s9··..+..·2"2376···.. ···..31'6:'7..·+·..·47s:4....·+..···6sf's·....+..··9'28:3....··t··'i",·l's9':6.... ..£~~.~.~..(;?~2...................... .......................!.......................l.......................l.......................!............................................1........................L......................1........................1...................... Latin America and 2,666 l 4,122 l 5,840 l 6,991 l 9,000 229.1 i 355.1 l 486.6 j 679.3 j 708.8

..£~!!~.~~~.~..{~~>....................................L......................L.....................l.......................1............................................1........................L......................1........................1....................... West Asia and 2,157 j 3,485 l 4,746 i 6,019 l 8,995 126.9 i 249.7 j 300.8 l 341.2 l 455.4

..~~!.!~.¥.!!S.~..{f.~2...............................L.....................,l.......................l.......................1............................................1........................1........................1........................1....................... Less developed 19,753 j 28,829 i 37,004 i 55,143 i 77,737 1,093.6 1 1,603.7 l 2,201.0 i 2,997.3 i 3,629.8

..~:::~~:~~i!~~1......·..·..··4·o:·395....·I..·..44:o3'9·....~....48';i23..··t....sl':602..·..l····56:·376·......i19'o:·7..t..··3·:os7:2'..+·..3:7i6·."3·····f....~i':i·7i4 ..··1···'4':8'12":9"" Countries (22) i ~ ~ l l ~ ~ ~ Total (152) 60,148 l 72,868 i 85,126 i 106,745 1 134,113 3,284.3 i 4,660.9 i 5,927.3 i 7,168.7 i 8,442.7

Source: Partiey. Roseboom andAnderson: Regional Perspectives on National Agricultural Research in Agricultural Research Policy: International Quantitative Perspectives. ISNAR, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

The research establishment of the rest of the Asian continent was more than three times that of the Latin American and the Caribbean region and more than five times that of the African continent (table 2). But among individual regions the middle size countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan each have between 100 to 200 million inhabitants and research systems with well over 1,000 scientists in contrast to the myriad small countries in Africa or Central America ..

Per capita income differences are also large. Average income in Latin America in 1993 was 10 times that in South Asia and six times that in Sub-Saharan Africa. With a combination of small countries and low incomes research systems with less than 200 scientists dominate in Africa.

Domestic policy support for agricultural development and trade have also been different. Poverty and the resource pressures are far more pressing in Asia than in other regions (table 1). But when quality of the physical resources, population growth rates and densities and a range of other variables critical for organizing international and national agricultural research are taken into account number of modifiers must be introduced in developing partnerships between the two sets ofactors.

These differences in developing countries together with the rapidly advancing frontiers of science, increased possibilities of collecting and processing information, reduced costs of communications, the growing impatience in the donor community for quicker and wider impact on poverty and natural resource management, reduced financial resources, increased human capacity in even the least developed among the developing

4

countries and the increased call for efficiency in the use of resources allocated to research all have substantial implications for what issues should receive high priority at the levels of international, regional and national levels and how collaborative research should be organized between the CGIAR centers and NARS.

For instance, clearly regional organizations are important for many small countries in Mrica to take advantage ofthe scale and scope economies in research. Yet regional cooperation is also necessary among the smaller number of larger countries in Asia and Latin America each of whom are far larger than the CGIAR system, so that their smaller and poorer counterparts in the region and across other continents can benefit from the advances in the research underway within their borders. Indeed, collaboration among developing countries across continents remains an underemphasized issue.

By the same token a combination of the lower cost structure and increased capacity in many developing countries means that some of the international and regional functions of research, education, training and information which enjoy economies of scale and scope might well be devolved to developing countries to an even greater extent than already occurs from the CGIAR centers. This is of course subject to assuring predictability and reliability of those services which the international community would expect. The questions of what activities might be devolved to the regional and national levels, in tum, raise issues as to who will pay for those services, the benefits ofwhich extend across several national borders and may indeed extend across regions? Reflecting these realities, the scope of the CGIAR's research and the NARS-CGIAR partnerships are already quite different among regions and may well diverge further depending on the nature of research challenges, their particular organizational needs, and the differences in the regional endowments of a variety of nature.

2. THE SCOPE OF THE PAPER

This paper addresses issues as to

• what to research, and • the principles for the organization of that research, particularly in terms of

what research might be conducted internationally, regionally and nationally in the future.

The paper attempts to identity those issues on which there appears to be a broad consensus as well as those on which there is wide divergence ofviews both as to the content and the organization of research. That review in tum provides a set ofhypothesis and questions for the IF AD-led initiative for the case studies to be carried out in all regions of the world with a view to expand the areas of consensus.

5

I I

3. OUTLINE OF THE PAPER

Section 4 presents key principles of research organizations and partnerships, section 5 discusses sequences of technological changes, section 6 describes the global research system, section 7 outlines the current seven levels ofNARS-CGIAR interactions, section 8 addresses funding issues ofNARS, section 9 focuses on research policy management and research priorities and section 10 ends with recommendations.

4. KEY PRINCIPLES OF RESEARCH ORGANIZATION AND PARTNERSHIPS

By lowering unit costs of production agricultural research increases factor productivity and increases efficiency. Increasingly research may also improve the management of natural resources. These benefits of research hold for all types of research, i.e., basic, strategic, applied and adaptive, and undertaken at all levels, i.e., international, regional, national and local organizations. Whereas there is extensive evidence to suggest that returns to agricultural research have been high, we will focus on the current and likely relative rates ofreturn to different types ofresearch, i.e., research on varietal improvement, for different crops, research on cropping and farming systems, research on resource management at various levels ofaggregation under homogenous and heterogeneous conditions etc. drawing mainly on the views ofanalysts at the forefront of these issues. The issue of likely returns to research is ofparticular importance in allocating research resources among types ofresearch and levels oforganization, in a period ofresource scarcities, the implications of which are explored later in the paper.

International agricultural research takes place through various avenues. For example highly effective international research was carried out on several export crops by colonial powers and some still continues. Similarly private foundations undertake international research. More is said on the various actors conducting international research and on the junders ofresearch and their implications for NARS-CGIAR collaborations later. International research is also carried out by the private sector, largely in situations where intellectual property rights and opportunities for profits are well established. Whereas this kind of research and particularly its application is growing in developing countries, the thrust of this paper is on international research with public goods characteristics, i.e.,

• research which experiences long gestation lags, • benefits ofwhich are difficult to capture, • extension over wide areas involving several nations if not continents (with

externalities and spillover effects which makes it unattractive to the private sector);

• research which is mainly directed towards the benefit ofpoor households and for the management ofnatural resources although it may have important externalities and spillover benefits in other sectors of the economy.

6

A number of analysts of international research have well articulated the various conditions in which international agricultural research may be justified, principles which may provide useful basis for assessing the scope and effectiveness of current research and implications for future partnerships in the international, regional and national organizations (see for instance, McCalla, Winkelmann). International research may be carried out for at least nine reasons. For example because:

1. there are economies of scale and scope in research (see the executive summary), providing scope of direct transfer of technology, or more typically scope for adaptation of technology over wide areas when additional applied and adaptive research is conducted as appropriate at the regional, national and local levels, e.g., much of the varietal improvements for rice and wheat in Asia or maize in Africa (see section--below);

2. developing countries may not have the capacity to carry out research (either because of lack of financial or human resources, incentive system, physical or administrative infrastructure), or because research may use germplasm, scientific equipment, advance research methods and technologies which may be beyond the reach of individual developing countries, but which may be accessible to international institutions due to their convening power, access to the research of advanced institutions etc., an argument which applied to the CGIAR's impressive crop improvement programs through plant breeding and more recently to new biotechnology research involving introduction ofdisease or pest resistance in crops;

3. its conduct may call for the types oflarge multidisciplinary teams which may be difficult to put together for individual developing countries and indeed even for their individual donor supporters, sometimes even at the regional level without substantial external scientific input, (see for example the research on Alternatives to Slash and Burn or on the Rice Wheat Systems discussed later);

4. there may be long gestation lags in the realization ofbenefits and governments of developing countries with high rates of discount may typically not allocate resources to those activities opting instead to undertake research with quick payoffs, (this argument may be particularly applicable in the case of research on poor farmers in countries with unequal land distribution, on marginal areas, orphan crops, resource management issues such as soil, water and forest management etc.);

5. donors and the international community may wish to influence the allocation of resources in a direction which due to a different preference function, developing countries may not be willing to do, for example, research to benefit indigenous people, women farmers, research addressed to the management of natural resources, research of an ecoregional nature which integrates physical, biological, social and economic processes simultaneously etc.;

7

6. the unit cost of doing research on a large scale may be lower than for each individual nation to undertake it;

7. spillover effects of research to others outside national borders may be so large as not to make it worthwhile for individual nations to undertake it;

8. research may entail transfer of existing methods, analytical tools, varietal improvements, resource management techniques practiced in industrial or more advanced developing countries to which individual nationals may not have easy access; and

9. due to a more conducive environment for the management of research its quality and timeliness may be more assured.

Clearly research which does not display any of these characteristics may be conducted at the regional or national levels. Collaborations among CGIAR centers, regional organizations and national research systems together with other actors in the international research system may alleviate some of the factors at the national and regional levels which shift research to international organizations which in principle can be more effectively conducted at those levels (e.g., a variety of research management issues discussed later in this paper), leaving only that research to international research organizations which Winkelmann calls quintessential international agricultural research, (QIAR), i.e., research which may be conducted at the international level, even when national research systems are strong. T AC has listed seven activities with comparative advantage at the international level, namely,

• collating and disseminating scientific information, • germplasm safekeeping, • germplasm improvement, • resource management and husbandry, • specialized training, • methods development, and • assessing global agricultural needs.

Clearly the greater the scale economies in research on these activities the greater the scope for potential savings in research costs or for shifting production frontiers and therefore the stronger the justification for international research. This does not mean however that large or rich national research systems will not conduct some or all of these activities. The question of the relative returns to these activities under specific circumstances and specific types of research for different size ofNARS in countries and regions at different stages of development call for attention. Similarly the comparative advantage of the CGIAR centers vis-a.-vis other organizations in undertaking some or all of these activities in a complementary way (e.g., research organizations of industrial countries) needs to be explored. It is to these issues that we now turn.

8

5. SEQUENCES OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES, CONTENT AND ORGANIZATION OF RESEARCH

Rapid economic growth in East Asia and to a lesser extent in South Asia was led by a strong technological change in agriculture relying on the growth of irrigation and fertilizer use as complements to high yielding varieties ofwheat and rice. That progress in agriculture has placed Asian countries in the first and even second post Green Revolution phases of the four phased typology of the sequence of technical change articulated by Byedee. He calls the first and second phases pre-Green Revolution and Green Revolution phases respectively (Byerlee). Although parts ofAsia, and particularly South Asia are still in the pre-Green Revolution and Green Revolution stages, particularly those in rainfed areas, several factors in irrigated agriculture have been far more favorable to agricultural and rural development in East and South Asia relative to other developing regions. Scale and scope economies have applied most effectively to crop improvement research on rice and wheat in Asia. Consequently, not only have the CGIAR centers (CIM:MYT and IRRI in particular) already had a long history of successful research output, particularly issuance of a large number ofgenetically improved varieties, and partnership with the NARS in the region in fostering the adaptation of those varieties to local conditions, but that history combined with new research problems of stagnating yield growth and declining resource qualities have already provided a basis for new and different types ofresearch partnerships in the post-Green Revolution period. Several factors additional to varieties explain the Asian success:

• national capacity developed through a combination of public policy and international assistance for successful adaptation of the new agricultural technology to specific locations and indeed to the development of additional locally suited germplasm by the large NARS themselves;

• homogeneity of the production conditions assured by the irrigated agriculture, enabling international research centers to achieve crop improvements with far wider impact than has been possible in the case of other crops, e.g., maize, sorghum, millets or cassava;

• policy framework highly supportive of smallholder agriculture. It is not simply that effective rates ofagricultural taxation have been the lowest in Asia relative to Latin America or Africa (c. Kroeger et al.).

• investments in irrigation, fertilizer use and infrastructure, such as roads and electrification, which have declined precipitously in developing countries in recent years, have also been far more favorable relatively to Latin America or Africa ( see table 1 for fertilizer use). Some have argued with justification that those investments have not ensued automatically simply by "getting prices right" (Ingco andMitchell). Public policies, have been highly supportive of the non-price factors (Pardey, Byerlee, Lele). Even more important, however, rapid adoption of new technologies in Asia at·

9

the Green Revolution stage has been made possible by an active and supportive role of the public sector, in such areas as distribution of seeds, fertilizer and credit combined with subsidies, despite the fact that product and factor markets were already stronger in Asia then than they are today in Africa. (Lele) Those same policies of public sector role have been called in question. This is in part due to the general questioning of the role of governments, and in part to the particularly weak governments of small and poor countries in Africa, with deleterious effects on the pace of adoption ofnew technology and the rate of yield increases, even where technologies have been adopted relative, for example, to the technology that is available on shelf (e.g., in the case of maize) in Africa. (Byerlee), and finally,

• equitable and secure land rights and political power structures more conducive to broadbased distribution of benefits of new technologies to low income rural households in Asia, than in Latin America or Africa.

Paradoxically it is such a conducive environment for agricultural development which has also stimulated rapid growth in Asian food demand and imports.

By creating employment and incomes in the agricultural sector the region's broad­based economic growth has reduced the share of the population living in poverty and fostered growth linkages with other sectors of the economy. Rapid diversification in diets including poultry, fruits and vegetables has stimulated both agricultural diversification and imports. The already high and growing land and other resource pressure, and the need to double and triple cereal and other agricultural production in the foreseeable future under conditions of already high input use and high but stagnating yields is presenting research challenges more complex than before. The situation in Asia calls for maintaining and even further strengthening the rather successful crop improvement programs in rice and wheat to address new environmental challenges of pest, disease resistance and so on, while simultaneously focusing attention on the maintenance of the quality of resources and thus on long term total factor productivity. That entails interactions among crops as well among resources and between crops, their rotations and resources, calling for a systems approach to research. It requires analytical techniques, both more multidisciplinary, and yet strong in individual disciplines, crops and resources (e.g., water or soil management) than those used before. There is clearly a case for strong partnership between the CGIAR centers and NARS in Asia.

The issues relate to whether the NARS, for example, are gearing up to strong multidisciplinary, multiobjective and multi-time horizon research while maintaining and augmenting their traditional strength in commodity research, and how the CGIAR centers as well as the partnership mechanisms such as the ecoregional initiatives are helping the regional NARS to make that transition. Those are issues and questions that the IF AD-led NARS initiative must explore. Past experience also offers useful insights for future partnerships with universities in industrial countries and countries in the region, with private foundations etc., particularly from the viewpoint of catching up with new

10

techniques ofanalysis, use of new tools, such as GIS etc., to build counterpart institutions at home (see below).

According to Byedee's typology and sequences, agriculture is at the level of pre­Green Revolution or at best Green Revolution stage in much of Africa. This is also true among small farmers in Latin America, as indeed in much ofthe semiarid areas ofAsia. With 50 percent of the global poor, Asia also contains the largest concentration of poverty, and the greatest land pressure, much of it in the more risky marginal areas (table 1).

Therefore the issues discussed below, although focused mainly on Africa have larger global significance as will become evident.

In the largely rainfed Africa, production conditions are far less controlled, e.g., through irrigation, therefore are less homogenous and more risky. What are the implications of these conditions for research on commodities, research on resource management or an optimal combination of the two, and the division of labor between the CGIAR centers and the NARS?

Comparative research among various regions of the world on the impact of past research, e.g., semiarid parts of Asia and Africa might offer considerable rewards, for NARS/ Regional organizations/CGIAR partnerships as well as global research partnerships, for instance, among regions of Asia and Africa. Such partnerships remain to be developed.

Crop and animal improvement programs in heterogeneous and risky circumstances have enjoyed far fewer scale economies than has research on controlled circumstances. Therefore the issues of the division of responsibility between the CGIAR centers and NARS are more blurry and more controversial. Yet there appears to be a strong consensus among observers of the CGIAR's impact to date (see for instance the various papers in J.R. Anderson ed.) that even in these circumstances, research by the CGIAR centers in crop improvement has had high rates of return and must continue. That research has posed considerable challenges to the CGIAR centers (e.g., CIMMYT, ICRISAT, IITA or WARDA), and placed greater demands on the relatively smaller and weaker NARS, which must conduct adaptive research to suit varieties to the diverse physical, biological and socioeconomic conditions.

Since their establishment ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA have undergone substantial changes in their research strategies to address these problems, e.g., shifting between crop improvement and resource management. Indeed currently the crop improvement programs are under risk in the context of declining financial resources and increased demand by the donors for research on resource management. But the returns to research to resource management whether by the CGIAR centers or others seem to be mixed at best.

11

ICRlSAT and CIM1'v.fYT have also opened regional research centers to isolate several specific ecoregional characteristics for which to undertake crop improvement programs. IITA and CIAT have shifted from the initial resource management emphasis to commodity research, and more recently back to resource management focus, albeit in the new ecoregional context (see McCalla), with perhaps also greater research focus on adaptation of technologies, e.g., in the case ofmaize, to location specific circumstances (see for instance Gilbert E. et a£). Besides, the CGIAR centers have made the case for more strategic research to solve some specific resource management or sustainability issues (e.g., Smith and Weber and Sanchez). But evidence on research impact in Africa is mixed in terms of the need for more strategic, as distinct from applied and adaptive research, and mixed in terms of the extent to which the CGIAR centers should shift to resource management issues as distinct from leaving that research to the NARS while providing considerable analytical input andfocusing on crop improvement research. In reviewing the evidence to date Binswanger argues for instance that "the advocates of expansion at the international level did not bring evidence on how strategic research had helped solve some specific resource management or sustainbility issue over a broad geographic range. As long as resources of the CGIAR centers are stagnant of declining, it would be too risky to divert resources from the fairly steady generation of commodity based advances to an area where the experience of the international centers has not been nearly as positive (Binswanger).

Others have expressed similar reservations about returns to past research on resource management (e.g., Lipton), and still others have stressed institutional, policy and social factors, rather than the absence of technological solutions, as having been a greater constraint (Binswanger, Byerlee and Lele). McCalla argues, and I concur, that clearly research on resource management must be seen as complementary to, rather than as substitute for, crop improvement research. (McCalla) But in periods ofresource shortages, it can de facto become a substitute as Binswanger suggests.

Resource management research seems ideally suited to NARS and regional organizations. However, most NARS, whether large or small, tend to be short of social science input, and tend not be equipped to address multidisciplinary issues. Thus international research centers have to be involved in resource management research to a greater degree than would be necessary, if all NARS were strong and Winkelmann's world of quintessential international research prevailed.

Evidence also suggests that the weaknesses of the NARSs in small or weak NARS may be posing special problems in ensuring effectiveness of the CGIAR centers, either in moving to more strategic end of the research whether on commodity improvement or resource management issues, or on having such strategic research as is carried out, tested in the field by NARS (Gilbert E, et a£).

The IF AD-led initiative should undertake systematic comparative investigations, for example, ofthe impact ofCGIAR technologies in comparable biophysical circumstances, Le., in the case of the same crops and similarly risky production

12

conditions. They should isolate the relative roles and the effectiveness of the CGIAR centers and NARS in strategic and adaptive research respectively, and the extent to which research organizations rather than other factors beyond research stations influence the rate of adoption.

Notwithstanding these limitations, impact studies do suggest that CGIAR centers may be acting as substitutes for rather than complements to the NARS, e.g., in the case of maize (Gilbert et at) in contrast to the situation reported for irrigated rice and wheat in Asia above. It would be important to explore as an input into the design of future NARS/CGIAR partnerships, as well as the steps needed from both the CGIAR centers and NARS to improve the content (e.g., the balance of crop improvement and resource managementlsustainability) of research, the organization of that research in terms of the strategic, applied and adaptive continuum, the linkages among them, and ways to achieve greater synergies.

The nature of shifts in diets also reflects the earlier stage of agricultural intensification in Africa, perhaps due to a combination of lesser population densities, poorer infrastructure and market development, and less effective technology policies.(Boserup, Lele and Stone, Pingali and Binswanger, Smith and Weber). Diets are largely shifting from sorghum, millets and cassava to maize, rice and wheat. But maize, rice and wheat too have posed greater technology challenges in Africa. Some literature suggests that being grown in more varied conditions, maize, for instance, has called for far greater applied and adaptive research than rice and wheat. This assertion however needs to be explored further to know if it is simply the nature of the maize crop, as distinct from the nature of the production conditions, the weaknesses of NARS or the weaknesses of the services beyond the farm level which have been a greater constraint, either to doing the needed adaptive research orland accelerating the pace of adoption. Once again some comparative explorations in the less successful areas and crops between Asia and Africa would be instructive.

Rice requires far more adaptive research in Asia relatively wheat, in rainfed conditions, where it has made fewer strides, no doubt, in part, due to less than effective adaptive research on the part of the NARS in Asia.

It is also clear that the research needs of developing countries and their ability to absorb external technology, or engage in effective partnerships in technology generation and application have become far more diverse in the last three decades depending on the highly diverse physical, economic and institutional circumstances. Understanding the precise constraints to technology generation by NARS and facilitating its adoption is of particular urgency. IF AD-led case studies should investigate these issues to derive lessons for the design ofpartnerships.

This reality has lent added urgency to the research problems posed by the dynamics ofgrowing population pressure on the land, virtual exhaustion of the extensive

13

I I

margin and shortages and degradation ofland and water, the urgent need to increase productivity with minimal additional use of resources.

We have argued that although the resource pressure is particularly severe in Asia which already houses half of the developing world's billion poor (see table 1 and figure 1), Africa poses even greater challenges. It contains a fifth of the poor but Africa's share in global poverty is projected to grow, by the World Bank's 1990 World Development Report, if past trends in economic growth continue. Smith and Weber and Anderson and Jodha have correctly identified the need for a combination of strategic, applied and adaptive research in heterogeneous areas (e.g., such as those of West African Savannahs or the forest, range lands and the hill areas ofAsia and Central America) focusing on increasing understanding of their key characteristics, using new techniques of analysis such as GIS to better understand the interactions among their physical, biological and socioeconomic dimensions, and going beyond traditional crops to "niche" activities.

Fig u re 1 . Re 9 iona ISha re of th e Global Poor

MNA ECA SSALAC 6% 00/0 19%10%

EAP 150/0

SAS 500/0

Source: World Development Report 1990

14

SA. The Crucial Role of NARS

Not surprisingly, both the CGIAR centers and the NARSs are under considerable pressure from the donor community to show wider and more rapid impact of technologies to address the growing poverty problem. Both are implicitly or explicitly under criticism about the relevance of their research to the changing needs of developing countries, for example, the extent to which the current research addresses the problems of resource poor areas, the most needy farmers, draws on indigenous knowledge, conserves rather than uses resources and links up with extension to have a demonstrable impact on the lives of people including women farmers. In short, critics are expecting future research to have a far broader, more multidimensional impact and quickly. They are also expecting the CGIAR systsem and the NARS to take advantage ofthe increased speed and precision in research made possible by the scientific advances in biotechnology, computers and information technologies, for the CGIAR centers to move upstream and to leave a greater share of the traditional research activity to the NARS. But those breakthroughs and the scope for increased specialization also requires that:

• new well working alliances be formed

• a more holistic approach to problem solving be adopted; and

• strong upstream and downstream linkages be established ranging from the adaptive to the basic research, if the expected vastly increased impact of technology on the farmers' fields is to be achieved. Besides the growing shortages of funds for international agricultural research make increasing efficiency in the use ofexisting resources imperative.

6. THE GLOBAL RESEARCH SYSTEM

Past successful partnerships between the NARS and the CG system have depended critically on the complementary inputs from a truly large number ofactors in the global­research system. That global research system has undergone major changes in recent years and is likely to change further. What deliberate actions the international development community takes to foster desirable changes, how it simultaneously mobilizes the energies of a number ofactors involved in technology generation, application and finance, and the extent to which it responds actively to the changes it has little control over, will make a significant difference to the prospects for developing countries. To understand the nature of the actions that might be considered in the context of the NARS-CGIAR partnership exercise it is necessary to:

• explore how the various parts of the global system function now and could operate better together in the future to ensure vigorous NARS-CGIAR partnerships, and

15

• identify the means to achieve them.

Given complex challenges, with few economies of scale in research, greater relative need for applied and adaptive research vis-a.-vis strategic research, it will not suffice to develop partnerships by NARS with the CGIAR system alone. Indeed, they were not sufficient even in the simpler Green Revolution days. Many other institutions played and will need to playa complementary role. They include the institutions in industrial countries, those in the relatively more advanced developing countries with particularly successful record of research and impact, and the many institutions within developing countries which are currently underutilized.

A schematic presentation of the types of actors currently, and in the past, involved in the conduct of agricultural research at the global level are shown in diagram 1. Those who fund research are shown in diagram 2.

16

'"d III

OQ (1)

...... .....

Diagram 1

INTERNATIONAL RESESARCH ORGANIZATI

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

C NARI=:> 88~v@)@)@

~ ~niversitie0

~ cEA~

CNARI:=:> Private Sector

'" \l) ()Q ro t-' ex>

Diagram 2

UN Organizations FAO, UNDP, UNEP

Regional Banks AFDB,IDB

~ivateSecv

Three different but interacting sets operate:

NARS ofIndustrial Countries. They constitute about 48% of the Global Research expenditures. The U.S., the largest among them, alone undertakes annual research expenditures of about $6 billion, a third in the public sector and the remaining in the private sector. Its research system draws on the work of23,000 Ph.D.s, who are backed by 45,000 other Ph.D.s working at the more basic end of the spectrum and in related fields.

NARS ofDeveloping Countries. Their share of the full time equivalents (FTEs) of the global public sector researchers is nearly two thirds and that of expenditures about half, i.e., equal to that of the industrial countries--reflecting the greater shortages ofoperating budgets developing countries' researchers face. But the diverse nature ofNARS defies easy generalizations as shown below.

International Research Organizations, including the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. In research expenditures the CGIAR constitutes only 4% of the total Global Research System, and engages about 1,000 scientists, although its role is larger than the share suggests.

It is clear simply from these numbers and shares that partnerships between the NARS and the CGIAR centers must inevitably involve the utilization of the large and currently underutilized segments of the global system, namely the NARS ofindustrial and developing countries.

6A. NARS of Industrial Countries

They have continued to remain an important source of supply of science to developing countries. Indeed, with rapid advances in basic research and research methods, the gap between developed and developing countries has increased, notwithstanding the gains made by developing countries in science in the post World War II period. The share of research publications from industrial countries in refereed journals, already overwhelming has increased in recent years.

US universities provide important input into the CGIAR centers through collaborative research, particularly in the new areas such as biotechnology (see the ESDAR paper on the role ofUS. universities in the CGIAR centers). Yet direct scientific collaborations and exchanges between industrial and developing countries (the US in particular) are far smaller now than they were in the peak period of bilateral official development assistance, (ODA) i.e., in the 1960s and 70s. New more imaginative mechanisms need to be developed to foster more equal partnerships between the scientists in developed and developing countries, different from the old paternalistic arrangements which prevailed in the cold war era. Such linkages would improve the state of science in

19

developing countries, minimize the current inbreeding and reverse the decline of the role of universities in developing countries in problem solving.

6A(i) Universities

The universities in industrial countries remain an important source of trained human capital for developing countries. They were the source of transferring the research-education-extension model, increasing the role of agricultural universities in agricultural research and making research and education more problem solving. In the 1960s and 70s the U.S. trained massive number of scientists from Asia, Latin America and Africa. The newly trained graduates provided an important complementary input into the generation of the first Green Revolution, particularly in Asia. While less spectacular, the US input was also important in Latin America (e.g., in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia) and Africa (in Ethiopia, Uganda and Nigeria). Via the US bilateral aid programs, US scientists together with their returning students brought home the latest techniques of analysis to the rapidly restructuring NARS, helped transform the content of NARS research programs and were catalytic in introducing new more objective, scientific criteria of performance of scientists. They also made research more problem solving and responsive to the needs of farmers.

Despite the decline in bilateral assistance, the US currently trains a third of the developing countries' nationals receiving advanced graduate education in agriculture abroad, i.e. nearly 5,000 agricultural graduates. But many now fund their own education. The proportion going into natural resource management has increased substantially as the U.S. educational system is adjusting its institutions and curricula to the new environmental concerns. These developing country students will have acquired outstanding qualifications in analytical techniques although their exposure to the problems of their own countries and to designing research appropriate to their own circumstances will be limited. They can potentially be a key ingredient in the future performance of developing countries' NARSs together with the faculties and students of their universities abroad. Jointly with the CGIAR centers, universities in Canada, the US, U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, France, the Nordic countries, Japan and Australia can provide substantial scientific stimuli to research, education and extension, as well as to policy and management of science. Such influence must occur through osmosis, rather than through paternalistic aid programs and aid conditionality of the past. But quality external input of a scientific nature has decreased precipitously in the last decade, not simply as a result of the decline in bilateral assistance (as in the case of the US), but due to the diminished emphasis in industrial countries on the long term issues facing developing countries, and the declining role of the universities relative to that of consultancy firms in aid programming. With diminished support fewer developing country students training under faculty abroad have exposure to the problems of their regions as part of their graduate experience. Many more now work on the problems of industrial countries. Combined with increased share of self financing and given the working conditions in research organizations currently prevailing in most developing countries, (see below), there is little incentive to return to home lands. Industrial countries currently benefit from considerable

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braindrain from developing countries. Informal evidence based on discussions with various NARS leaders and US university faculty suggests that the graduates, who will return, will, in all probability, be poorly utilized in the public sector and wasted, or the most qualified ones will move to the more dynamic and lucrative private sector, contributing to the crisis ofpublic sector research quality. The causes behind the brain-drain and brain waste in developing countries need special attention as part of the IF AD-led initiative. Steps can be identified to deploy these graduates productively in the NARS, by learning lessons from the past, including about the critical synergetic role the universities of industrial countries and of private foundations played (see below)e.g., in the course ofgraduate education, research and the early years ofprofessional carriers. Such deployment was, and can in the future, be a fast and effective means of bringing new scientific methods of analysis and a strengthened science culture to the research systems ofdeveloping countries, both directly, via the continued involvement of the faculties of the universities in which the students are training, as well as via the benefits that might ensue from this process, e.g., in the establishment of peer review processes, joint publications in refereed journals, participation and reporting of collaborative research results in seminars and conferences and so on.

By helping to maintain the presence ofinternational problems in the forefront of education in industrial countries and making it relevant to the changing global circumstances, such collaborations would also bring benefits to industrial countries. Their educational systems --which to date boast some ofthe best analysts of tropical problems-­are in danger oflosing that experience with the passing of the current generation. Besides science in industrial countries is rapidly moving upstream with less field involvement. International collaborations can bring greater relevance to their scientific research.

The emerging regional research organizations in developing countries discussed below can become an important vehicle ofdeveloping programs in which to engage recently educated graduates and their faculty in collaborative research together with national scientists particularly including those from their national universities. NARS will set priorities for research and be the executing agencies for its conduct. Impact studies show the significant role industrial countries' universities are playing as a bridge between the CG centers and NARS in accelerating the process of technology adaptation and adoption (see Anadajayasekeram andMartella andAnanc;ijayasekeram et aI). To further help build national capacity, the collaborations will need to improve in the areas in which weaknesses have been identified in past evaluations, for example, by establishing competitive selection processes to ensure that the most qualified researchers are involved, developing long-term collaborations, complementing individual collaborations with institution-to-institution agreements, improving links with farmer extension and getting universities in developing countries to be partners.

Universities in industrial countries have vast resources even recognizing that the research support budgets per FTE (faculty teaching equivalent) have declined considerably in recent years. A single department of soil sciences in a U.S. land grant tends to have more soil scientists than the entire CGIAR system. A single agriculturally important state

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in the U.S., such as California or Florida, has an agricultural research budget one-fifth or a quarter of the CGIAR budget, and so on. The land-grant institutions are expected to marry research, education and extension as a matter of routine. By the very nature of their function and financing, they are required to take a long-term view of their mission and the time needed to achieve impact with an appropriate balance among the three activities.

The GREAN (The Global Research on the Environmental and Agricultural Nexus) initiative is such an effort of a taskforce consisting of faculties in the US, scientists in the CGIAR centers and the NARS in Asia, Mrica and Latin America. It recommends the creation of a mechanism, urges funding it with new monies to help restore a once important role ofU.S. universities and their students from developed and developing countries in building the NARS capacity in developing countries.

On a global scale, Germany (e.g., AIDA) and the European Union have similar initiatives under way. Those efforts are aimed at increasing intra-country and inter-country institutional coordination in bilateral aid programming and at fostering active engagement in developing countries. Together they can playa role in the IF AD-led initiative to strengthen research and adoption capacity in developing countries.

6A{ii) Foundations and Small Donors {e.g., IDRq

Foundations in industrial countries, particularly in the U.S., have played a catalytic role in the Global Research System over the last 40 years in:

• bringing new science to developing countries (e.g., the rice biotechnology program of the Rockefeller Foundation) and

• developing the capacity of the NARS, e.g., the role of the Rockefeller Foundation in India (Lele and Goldsmith).

They play similar roles in Africa and Latin America. Overall their role too has declined in agricultural research, but has increased in grassroots-oriented action research, e.g., the role of the Ford Foundation in community-level water and forest management and, through it, in helping to establish community-based water and forest management policies, e.g., in India.

The foundation input has been intensive in nurturing the human spirit and the related grassroots institutional development, particularly when considered in relation to the relatively small sums they have expended.

Yet foundatioris are also a small, albeit strong, source of the application of good science to solving practical problems in developing countries by matching talented but financially challenged national scientists with their counterparts in industrial countries, often through competitive programs, for example, the McKnight Foundation's new biotechnology program.

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Foundations do not have sufficient resources to address problems on a global scale. Yet the approach they pursue merits copying by the international donor community, perhaps by establishing an international foundation/endowment for strengthening NARS research and establishing their strong linkages with institutions in industrial countries and the CGIAR centers. Competitive peer review based research grants driven by the agenda developed through the NARS-farmers consultation may become a candidate. More is said on innovative financing later in the section on financing.

Unlike the official bilateral and multilateral donors who support research organizations in developing countries (see section---below), foundations tend to be

• decentralized with funding decisions left to their offices in the field who understand the local conditions, individuals and institutions better,

• pluralistic, involving support for many non-governmental organizations,

• flexible in both the content and administration offunds, and

• stable in their support in times ofpolitical turmoil providing continuity and predictability which many official aid programs lack.

This explains why returns on their investments tend to be large. The Rockefeller Foundation, for instance, spent the equivalent ofa mere 23 million 1984 dollars in a large country such as India, over a ten-year period. In an earlier paper Lele and Goldsmith demonstrated why their impact in India was greater, compared to donor commitments of $108 million for simply the first five-year phase of a research project in Senegal with a population of 8 million (Lele and Goldsmith). The small assistance to high quality science from the foundation was catalytic in making the larger US. assistance to India productive. Even though foundations operate in East and Southern Africa, their relationship with official donors is often more distant than existed, with the then dominant US bilateral assistance in Asia. In many parts of the developing world, e.g., in West Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, their presence is limited. Official donors with access to large capital, but less capacity for flexibility or specialized scientific input, need to explore ways by which they might develop partnerships with foundations.

An interesting issue is whether donors would experiment with the idea of an international foundation, either as a complement to the IDB innovation on financing regional entities or under the umbrella of the CGIAR, while instituting mechanisms that enable them to replicate the management of foundations, e.g., in scientific excellence, flexibility and innovation, initially on a small scale. For even with innovative financing, regional organizations face the risk ofbecoming top heavy bureaucratically due to the heavy input of donors and national governments.

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The recent highly successful IDRC (and other donor-funded) program offostering macroeconomics research among African economists provides another example of the use of similar principles. The program helps link well-qualified macro economists in African universities and research institutions, who often lack research support in their universities, with their best counterparts in industrial countries and international institutions, through research granting mechanisms, conduct of collaborative research as well as networks involving annual meetings, workshops, publications and so on. A key to the success of the African macroeconomics effort lies in the fact that it is managed by individuals with well­established qualifications in conducting research and in research management, first from Canada, and later from Africa. The nature of leadership continues to sustain the credibility and the interest of highly qualified African and international economists in the mechanism.

6A(iii) The Tropical Research Organizations ofIndustrial Countries

Industrial countries such as France, Britain, the Netherlands and Australia have research organizations with long-standing experience and skills in tropical research. The research establishment of CIRAD is larger than the CGIAR system. Currently, the linkages of these systems with developing countries are mainly through bilateral aid programs. Those linkages too are weakening in several cases as bilateral aid has diminished in some cases. The relative importance ofresources channeled through multilateral organizations has increased and attention has shifted to Eastern Europe. But the scientist-to-scientist collaborations and the institutional mechanisms for research that many of the ex-colonial countries help foster in developing countries need to be reviewed again from the viewpoint of linkages and lessons of that experience in a different context.

6A(iv) Other Regional Organizations

Other institutions in industrial and developing countries which conduct agricultural research are the private sector and government research organizations such as the USDA, or organizations, such as the Asian Vegetable Research Development Center (AVRDC) funded by Taiwan and others. Their interaction through scientific collaborations with NARS in developing countries should increase substantially, particularly in the context of liberalized trade regimes which have opened up opportunities for production ofa range of nontraditional cash crops. Trade liberalization is spawning agricultural diversification to labor intensive high-value crops throughout the developing world, with much potential for employment and income generation. Those collaborations need to grow, Simultaneously with collaborations with the CGIAR centers.

An ecoregionally-based global research system should be a vehicle to foster such international partnerships, by creating new more appropriate mechanisms to build on what we already know works. It should forge partnerships among developing countries, not simply among those in the immediate region or sub-region, but across continents. Ecoregional studies, e.g., on the Alternatives to Slash and Bum or on the Rice Wheat Systems, hold considerable potential to bring about strong interaction among the NARS of industrial and developing countries across continents. However, the planning of several

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of the ecoregional studies to date has been relatively top-down, with less than ideal degree of involvement of the NARS, and limited, ifany, involvement ofthe universities in either developed or developing countries, although different ecoregional studies vary greatly in their planning process and in the extent to which they have fostered pluralistic participation.

6B. Developing Countries' NARS

With between 20,000 to 50,000 researchers, the giant NARSs of China and India are already involved in some advanced basic and strategic research. They appear to have funded their research systems relatively well compared to the small African NARS, but the picture is less clear on this issue than we would like (Pardey). In any case large NARS are far less donor dependent. They are also capable of taking on a much greater role, including relating to the smaller NARSs, e.g., in their ecoregions. The CGIAR centers already play an important role in fostering such cooperation among NARSs. But there is scope for increasing these linkages.

Regardless of size, most NARS in developing countries suffer from monopoly role for the public sector National Agricultural Research Institutions (NARIs), isolation and inbreeding among scientists, shortage of operating resources, inadequate incentives and accountability, only a limited role for the universities and non-governmental research institutions, poor representation of client interests in the definition and execution of research priorities and weak linkages with the extension systems. NARS will need to become more pluralistic with an increased role for their universities, non-governmental research institutions, farmers' organizations and the NGOs to substantially expand the research and the adoption process. Progress on priority setting and organizational and management reforms at the national level has been slow, notwithstanding the substantial and growing international support for this activity through, for example, ISNAR, the World Bank and other donor funded projects, SPAAR and FAO (see below).

6C. The Emerging Regional Organizations

At the regional level, research organizations have begun to spring up; e.g., in Africa, SACCAR, CORAF and ASARECA, organizations that are supported by SP AAR; in Asia, AAPARI, the formation ofwhich was fostered by FAO; in Latin America PROCISUR, PROCIANDINO; in the Caribbean Islands, CARDI; and in W ANA, AARINENA. Each regional organization has a different history, different sets of concerns, constitutions and dialogues.

In Africa, donor support to the formation of SP AAR and to the sub-regional organizations has given a boost to increased consultation among NARSs. With a few exceptions (e.g., after the entry of South Africa in SACCAR or with the presence of Nigeria in West Africa), the relative similarity in ecologies, size and stage of development of the NARS in Africa has been a help in developing regional collaboration. NARS can benefit from the experience of others more advanced e.g., in Latin America from the

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financing experimentation by Uruguay and Colombia, private sector research underway in Brazil, and Chile, resource management research in South Asia from India, and in small­scale irrigation or the food processing area in West Africa from Nigeria.

Financing issues are at the heart of successful NARS-CGIAR interactions and are discussed in detail later in section 8. Only those financing issues which are influencing the emergence of regional organizations are considered at this stage. Recently, specific donors, e.g.,. the European Union and the Inter-American Development Bank have offered financial support to member countries for the establishment ofa Regional Investment Fund For Agricultural Technology to establish regional capacity for research. IDB is promoting the establishment of an endowment fund to finance research of regional interest. The endowment will generate an annual flow of at least $10 million to be allocated to high priority strategic research at the regional and sub-regional level with characteristics of international public goods. The resources for the fund would come from the resources lent to countries benefiting from regional research activities by the World Bank, the IDB and IF AD and from the budgetary resources ofgovernments. The contributing countries would manage the fund through a board of directors which will identify research priorities and assign the resources of the fund in accordance with those priorities (IDB). The IDB proposal is clearly a preferred arrangement compared to that which existed in the past, e.g., in the case ofthe former East African Community. Member countries were reluctant to fulfill their debt obligations to the EAC once the community disintegrated. Even if commitment exists among recipients to fund regional organizations through borrowed funds--and this paper makes recommendations to foster such commitment through the IF AD initiative--if contributions to regional efforts depend mainly on funds received from donors, and therefore if the management of regional organizations is donor driven, they will not be sustainable in the long run. At least some domestic resource mobilization from the outset with a clear, albeit 10- to I5-year timetable to reduce external dependence would be crucial to the long-term health of the institutions. Increased internal financing also raises important fiscal, scientific management and governance (e.g., accountability to small farmers) issues, addressed in section--below.

There does not seem to be an agreement among highly respected analysts of NARS as to whether strong regional organizations can be developed based on weak NARS member(s), and whether they can equally benefit all NARS. Several regional organizations are already moving toward priority setting, e.g., ASARECA and CORAF at the regional level. Without a strong base of priorities at the nationallevel--the criteria and the means to achieve those are discussed below--can regional arrangements be successful? Recreating and duplicating many of the NARS functions at the regional level through

. regional organizations may assure their success, but only to the detriment ofNARS. This paper envisages development of regional arrangements that augment the capacity of the NARS to undertake research, albeit to do so in concert with other NARS in the region so as to benefit from collaborative synergies. How best to ensure these synergies so that they are mutually supportive rather than at the cost of the development ofNARS is an issue which will remain with regional organizations and is discussed later in the context of the conduct, governance and the fmancing of research at the national levels.

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Priority setting and its implementation at the national level is still weak in many cases. However, there also seems to be little consensus among professionals as to the considerations that should enter into priority setting, the relative weight among them, and procedures and methodologies for priority setting that are both effective and have a reasonable chance of being adopted in developing countries. For example, in the US. priority setting of public sector research at various levels is a highly diffused process that responds to a combination of client interests, considerations of scientific possibilities, knowledge ofhow private sector interests mayor may not respond, trade and resource maintenance concerns, consumer expectations and so on. In developing countries, priority setting exercise tends to be relatively more abstract and driven by analytical techniques developed by donor advisors, involving limited dialogue with internal interest groups, or with scientists in terms of likelihood for breakthroughs. Regional articulation of priorities is understandably still at an early stage. Regional dialogue on research priorities with the CGIAR centers in an organizational sense is less advanced in Asia than in Africa, and perhaps even in Latin America, although research collaborations with CGIAR centers are stronger relative to the other two regions. The strength ofresearch at the national level will ultimately determine the quality ofregional synergies through organizational innovations and will increase the ultimate impact on the farm families. Implications of strengthening NARS for the IF AD-led initiative, therefore, must constitute an important core in the facilitation process and in the development ofnew, more appropriate mechanisms for fostering partnerships.

6C(i) Past Experience with Regional Cooperation

There is also much past experience on research productivity ofcommodity programs and the ingredients of their success upon which the NARS-CGIAR initiative needs to build. For instance, some of the best research work at the national level (e.g., in Kenya and Zimbabwe) and at the regional levels (on tea, coffee, cotton) in the Eastern and Southern African NARSs, and on cotton under the umbrella ofIRTC and recently CIRAD in West Africa, or most recently on horticultural crops in Kenya, was stimulated by:

• the demand for an assured supply of high-quality produce in the international markets,

• the recognition of the existence of a common set of pest, disease, soil and farm management issues across national boundaries;

• smallness of the individual NARS; • existence of scale economies in research; • the need to bring special expertise to bear on common problems; • need for assured funding on a predictable long-term basis.

Research in crops such as tea and coffee in the East African Community was conducted at a relatively low cost and funded mainly through a cess allocated specifically for research, unlike in the case of the cotton research in Francophone Africa funded by the

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French. But regardless of the source of funding, most such outstanding regional efforts collapsed because of the absence of commitment at the highest political levels in the countries to protect them, although high-quality research remains in some crops in some countries, e.g., tea, coffee and most horticultural crops in Kenya or cotton in Zimbabwe. Those regional arrangements which remain, e.g., the regional cotton research system in Francophone Africa, are due to a strong external presence in the region, although a strong foundation of African cotton researchers has now been developed by CIRAD.

6C(ii) Managing Regional Research Priorities

Some regional organizations in Africa, such as SACCAR and AS ARECA, already host or propose to host international networks and ecoregional studies. But this may make substantial demands on their limited capacities in absence ofgreater intercenter collaboration and clear assignment of responsibilities and accountability of centers. The management issues for the development of partnerships are illustrated by the examples of differences in the strength ofscientific research and networking, among regions in the case ofrice and maize. There is not yet the equivalent of the Asian rice network involving the active participation ofNARS scientists working on maize research in Africa, notwithstanding the importance of maize and the long standing record of high quality maize research by some African NARS, going back to the 1950s, i.e., well before the arrival of the CGIAR centers. Who should take credit for these differences among regions? In the comments received on the earlier draft ofthe paper, some readers pointed out the role that IRRI played in developing the rice network in Asia relative to the absence ofthe similar role by a CGIAR center in Africa. This difference could be explained in part by the fact that in Africa maize research has been the responsibility of both CIM:MYT (in the semi-arid regions) and lITA (in the humid zones), and in the case of rice of lITA and WARDA (and indirectly IRRI). In contrast IRRI has had a rather clear mandate for rice in Asia, making it easier for IRRI to exercise a leadership role. Besides, several Asian NARS too had their relatively strong national coordinated commodity programs, making it easier to develop an international network.

The issue ofmaize research in Africa raises important questions both about how to sustain the good quality research efforts ofNARS in situations ofeconomic, financial, institutional and political instability, but also the steps CGIAR centers need to take to assign clear responsibility and expect accountability in the development of regional programs to specific centers so as to avoid confusion, competition for scarce resources and ultimately lack of accountability and frustration.

6C(iii) Past Experience With Farming Systems Research

As the CGIAR system is moving from the issues related to the productivity of individual crops in a single season to total factor productivity over a number ofyears, NARS, and particularly the weak ones among them, face a complex dilemma: Should they leapfrog to addressing the higher-level research issues without the strong foundation of commodity research programs, e.g., at the levels ofcropping systems, the farming systems

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or the watersheds, involving strong interactions among commodities and resources, and between them over a long-term perspective, calling for strong interdisciplinary research and strong interaction among centers? The farming systems research contributed a great deal to our understanding of the positive issues, meaning what exists in terms of current farming practices and why, but there is debate as to the extent to which it informed researchers on the normative issues, i.e., on their implications for what needs to be changed in the development of technology packages to achieve higher levels of total factor productivity (see for instance McCalla, Lipton, Binswanger, Byerlee vs. Collinson and Matlon on this issue). The new ecoregional approach needs to ask searching questions, both as to the nature of ecoregional research and its implications for priority setting by the NARSs based on that past experience, iffuture disappointments are to be avoided.

6C(iv) The Need/or Political Commitment at the Top

An important issue which the IF AD-led initiative should work toward is the ascertainment of--or, in its absence, the development of--national commitment both at the highest political andfinancial levels, and not simply at the levels ofthe NARS directors and donors as well as among the ultimate clients ofresearch. The successful estab lishment of such a foundation at both ends of the political spectrum will create the necessary base for the long term sustainablity of regional organizations. The mobilization of agricultural ministers to support the renewal of the CGIAR forms an important beginning for widening the dialogue to eventually include ministers offinance and heads of states as the only means of development of the necessary national and regional political and financial commitments. This would also be a way of increasing attention to research investment in the macroeconomics dialogue of donors. Currently, it often receives short shrift since research is a long-term enterprise and policy dialogue focuses on readily achievable and visible reforms, such as the adjustment of the exchange rate or the balancing of the budget.

6C(v) Engagement o/the Grassroots

Equally important should be the laying of the foundation --where one does not exist--and fostering the development of commodity and farmer groups and their active incorporation in the research management ofNARS where they are already active, as for instance in Kenya. An analysis of those countries' experience with generating and sustaining farmer involvement (as distinct from that of the NGOs) will provide insights into the steps needed to replicate the situation in the same countries in other commodities, and in other regions and countries.

Without a strong national demand for regional cooperation and without national efforts to develop national and regional partnerships from the bottom up by exploring all its implications for long-term sustainability, viable regional organizations will not develop.

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6D. The CG Centers

The commodity-oriented CGIAR centers are older and better funded with relatively clear -cut mandates geared to increasing productivity of specific commodities, albeit their mandates have now become broader to address resource management of the commodity-based cropping systems, compared to the more recently formed CG centers. The mandates of the latter are more in tune with the recent environmental concerns in the donor community. Some of the new centers, however, do not as yet have the necessary in-house scientific capacity for the conduct of research. As we emphasized earlier, networking can only be successful when based on a strong foundation of research.

The policy and institutionally oriented CG centers, such as IFPRI and ISNAR, have focused on policy and research management issues. The commodity and the natural resources-oriented centers have tended to focus on the micro issues. The increased emphasis on intercenter collaboration should increase the synergies between the policy and institutionally based work ofIFPRI and ISNAR, with a stronger base ofmicro level, including particularly the scientific foundation established by the other centers. The character of the center interactions with the NARSs will in all likelihood change in the future, both with respect to each other and relative to the NARS. The implications of these proposed changes for partnerships with NARS must be borne in mind.

Each of the individual centers have rather limited mandates, although together the CGIAR system covers a large portion of the NARS mandate. Therefore there is the issue of coordination in the work of the centers as well vis-a.-vis the NARS, and particularly the small NARS with limited human and financial capacity. But even when the mandate of the entire CGIAR system is considered, it is still limited in relation to the breadth of issues NARS must address. The obvious two areas in which the mandate of the NARS is wider than that of the CG centers include the production ofhigh value crops and the issues related to post-harvest technologies, the first one of which is considered in the paper. Without coordination and priority setting among centers, regional organizations which have offered to be hosts for the CG initiatives, may face too large a set of CG activities vis-a.-vis their own priorities that they should address from their perspective. Once again, this might be a greater problem for the regional organizations of smaller NARS with limited capacity.

The centers have faced two quite opposite pressures: on the one hand, to produce high-quality research output in large quantities to demonstrate their credibility as research institutes, and on the other, to conduct training ofNARS scientists and undertake institution building, not simply through short-term courses, but via collaborative research with NARS. Reaching a balance between the two objectives is not easy given the highly limited resources of the centers. The recent TAC stripe reviews on policy and institution strengthening by the CGIAR recognize this dilemma.

Due to the frequency of their accountability to the funders, the CG centers are also under far too great a pressure to show results. But by their very nature, both research and

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institutional strengthening are long-term activities requiring a long-time horizon. Universities in industrial countries are more appropriate complementary partners to the CGIAR centers in achieving that objective.

7. THE SEVEN LEVELS OF CURRENT NARS-CGIAR INTERACTIONS

The issues raised above are interesting to explore in the context of the IFAD-Ied initiative because, within the CGIAR system itself, efforts have been under way for a considerable period of time toward developing stronger NARSs-CGIAR interactions, among other things, through the establishment of regional and global fora for NARS consultations, starting with the Bellagio Declaration in 1975. By and large these organizational efforts have not yielded any significant results and may have contributed to the limited success of the NARS-CGIAR interactions at the most exciting and productive level, namely, among a group ofscientists pursuing common goals under concrete research projects to have an impact on the farmers' fields. Therefore, a whole range of issues that determines the quality of those interactions are explored next.

Interactions between the two sets occur at at least seven levels:

• among scientists pursuing collaborative research;

• among managers of individual research programs in the NARS and the CGIAR centers;

• among heads of CGIAR and NARS programs;

• through representation of developing countries' scientists on the CGIAR center boards, center reviews and so on;

• at the CGIAR meetings with representatives ofNARS;

• with TAC;

• at the ministerial level.

There also are scientists from developing countries in the CGIAR Centers. Those in the CGIAR centers, on their boards, on T AC, on the oversight committee, in the periodic reviews ofthe CG Centers, and so on bring perspectives from developing countries as well, but perform their duties primarily as professionals rather than as "representatives". In some cases there is far too little involvement of developing countries nationals, for example, in the leadership of CGIAR centers, in the T AC and the CGIAR center reviews and center boards.

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An important challenge for the IF AD-led initiative is how it might help foster more and stronger quality research by NARS scientists through the synergies of international and regional collaborations.

The representation ofNARS at the CGIAR meetings has been limited until recently and only recently has resulted in substantive contributions. This may be in part because the regional representatives have often not been NARS leaders. Besides regional interests have been neither articulated systematically for the regional representatives to express effectively, nor perhaps sought vigorously by the CG system until recently.

Although nearly half ofT AC members have tended to be from developing countries and brought to bear their experience, formal dialogue between the T AC and the NARSs as institutions is relatively new. TAC formulates its priorities among commodities and regions and more recently among natural resource conservation and enhancement at the global level, whereas the NARS are concerned with national level issues, and have only recently begun to address scientific issues at the regional levels. These are probably more effectively discussed in the context of the work programs of individual CGIAR centers. However, precisely how the process ofinteraction between the two works and how effectively is not that well understood and might be profitably explored in the context of the IFAD-Ied initiative. Without being organized to systematically conduct overviews of issues affecting their own regions and countries from their vantage point NARS will not be equipped to conduct dialogue with T AC in a way which will contribute to TAC's regional priorities from the global perspective.

Besides, implementation of priorities seems to be more important than the abstract discussion of priorities, which are inadequately implemented due to a lack of resources. Both the CGIAR centers and particularly the NARS face difficult day-to-day operational problems in funding, staffing and carrying out their programs on the ground. These constraints critically influence the implementation of even such priorities as are agreed, and determine the impact on the farmers' fields. Without serious addressing of the implementation issues discussion of relative priorities as perceived by T AC, CGIAR centers and NARS might be no more than a discussion ofbuilding castles in the air.

Finance is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to implementation. Understandably, therefore, both the NARS and the CGIAR centers expect the collaborative efforts between them to augment their financial resource base. For instance, the resource-strapped NARS­-many ofwhich lack even the few funds needed for their own researchers to travel to oversee trials on research stations, not to mention contributing to demonstration trials and trials on the farmers' fields by the extension agents--hope to receive financial support from the CGIAR centers to implement the new ecoregional programs. The CG centers, on the other hand, hope to benefit from some of the resources donors and governments are committing to NARS to conduct country-specific and now regional programs. For instance, governments in South Asia are contributing to the ecoregional study on rice and wheat, both through their own budgets and through the World Bank credits approved for research projects. The IFAD-led initiative needs to address these rather nitty-gritty issues

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in terms ofwhich partner is doing/can do what in the future: where, when, how and with what degree of certainty and quality, how it differs among regions within and among continents. It is only then that the implications of the situation on the ground for the design of improved collaboration can be identified.

7A. Need for Dialogue at Policy-Making Levels

In the earlier seotions we stressed the need for intensifying the dialogue at the cabinet and head of state level as well as the farmer organizational level to increase domestic political commitment and financial contributions for NARS. Since the CGIAR is forming an advisory committee involving NGOs, it is worth exploring how the committee might be mobilized for the benefit of the IF AD-led initiative. Yet, NGOs must not be confused with farmers' organizations that involve actual farming communities. There is need to strengthen the voice of both. Similarly, the CG system needs to establish dialogue with ministers of agriculture in developing countries on a routine basis. Funding mechanisms are an important means of ensuring broad participation and good governance, the issues to which we now tum.

8. FUNDING OF NARS

8A. National Funding

Assured financing of agricultural research on a long-term predictable basis is the key to effective research systems and through agricultural development can be a passport to economic prosperity. Financing depends in part on the level of per capita income and the budgetary health of the governments. Budgetary health is by and large better in Asia than either Latin America or Africa, although generalizations are difficult. Priority to research should also be determined by the importance ofagriculture in the economy, the share of population in agriculture, the extent of poverty, and not the least important, political commitment ofgovernments to agricultural and rural development, in tum determined by the extent to which agricultural interests are represented in the state. The share of funding for research in the agricultural value added tends to be inversely related to the proportion of population in agriculture and directly to the level ofper capita income and political commitment to support the farming community, which paradoxically seems to increase as agriculture's share in employment declines. This poses complex challenges for the IF AD-led initiative. By and large countries underfunding research are those with a large share ofpopulations in agriculture.

Countries successful in agriculture typically have been those willing to fund research through domestic resources on a consistent predictable basis. Malaysia, a country of 19 million and a per capita income of $3,000 in 1993 had a research budget of$3.6 billion in 1990, most of it funded internally, compared to Kenya, a country with a relatively stronger commitment to small-farm agricultural development in Africa, with a population of25.3 million, per capita income of$350, had a research budget of less than

33

$3.5 million, 60% of which was funded by the donors. (Ndiritu). In Malaysia, research expenditures have been rising, although (or with the result that?) the proportion of the population in agriculture is declining and now stands at 18%. Research expenditures were close to 4.5% ofagricultural GDP in Malaysia in 1990.

Budget pressures are the most severe in small poor countries with large shares of population and poverty in the agricultural and rural sectors. Allocations to research have declined to a greater extent in the countries involved in structural adjustment, i.e., mainly in Africa and Latin America, although the growth in research expenditures has slowed throughout the developing and developed world since the 1980s. Yet a part of the reason for the macroeconomics crisis is the crisis of the agricultural sectors, in turn a result of the neglect of agriculture.

SB. Global Actors in Funding

Diagram 2 shows the large number of agencies currently involved in funding research. The NARS research in developing countries is funded mainly by the governments and donors. Attention to the role of private sector funding is increasing. Research funded by multinational and domestic commercial sectors can clearly be termed as private sector funding. But there are a number of ambiguities in the concept. For instance, is the cess imposed on and paid by farmers and set aside for the funding research to be considered as part of private or the public sector funding? That would seem to depend on who collects the cess, i.e., whether farmer's organizations, private companies, the commodity groups (e.g., the Citrus Commission in Florida), the industry as a whole (e.g., the coffee sector in Kenya) or the government. Even in advanced developing countries such as Chile and Malaysia, private sector funding has been supported by a strong partnership with the public sector.

The private sector is unlikely to be involved in subsistence agriculture and natural resource management. Even in the case of activities with obvious commercial and profit opportunities, the basic research underlying commercialization often tends to be undertaken in public systems even in industrial countries ..

Farmers' organizations must become an important actor, not just in helping to mobilize financial support for research over time, but at early stages, in determining research priorities and their implementation. Over time, they must play an increasing role in financing research, e.g., through check-offs, and contribution of their labor and management in setting research priorities and ensuring their implementation. Farmer financing of research through set asides is an important means of increasing stability, predictability and consistency in research funding and programming.

Colombia and Uruguay have experimented with farmer financed research with success. But Pineiro points out that to maintain allocative freedom, finance ministers tend not to support set asides. Pineiro argues that the idea of general fiscal revenues financing agricultural research can work only when political markets are competitive and

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farmers, particularly small farmers, have an important voice in priority setting offiscal resources at the national level. Because this tends not to be the case in most developing countries, and particularly those with skewed distribution of income and assets, or urban bias, it is important that models other than those based on pure competition be considered for financing agricultural research. Real world experience of developed and developing countries that have excelled in agricultural research and development needs to be brought to bear through empirical, including historical, analysis to understand how and why research funding could be ensured on a sustainable and predictable basis, so as to learn lessons for countries with funding problems. The IF AD-led initiative might make a contribution in this regard.

Bilateral and multilateral agencies are the primary source of research funding in:

• small and low income countries and • countries with a limited commitment to research funding.

The number of donors has increased over time and become more concentrated in Africa, but there is less than optimal coordination among donors, including within individual donor agencies, e.g., between the offices responsible for financing research at the global level (e.g., the CGIAR centers) and those funding research at the regional and national levels.

Financing agencies face at least three challenges, namely:

1. the need to develop consensus on the substantive objectives and procedures, lessons ofexperience and the responsibilities for reforms on a range of research policy and management issues at different levels, e.g., at the level of the NARS, the CGIAR centers, donors, universities and so on;

2. the need and the procedures for increased coordination within, agencies, e.g., between the global and regional bureaus of funding agencies, given that the importance of investment in research is inadequately appreciated at the macroeconomics, and sometimes even the sectoral levels of management in many donor agencies; and

3. the need to achieve coordination among the numerous donor agencies.

Although considerable progress has been made in this regard, much more could be achieved through the IF AD-led initiative provided the facilitation process can be a vehicle for developing consensus among key actors including, but not confined to, the NARS and the CG centers.

The sections below demonstrate the importance ofdonor financing of research in Africa by focusing on the patterns ofWorld Bank funding and the associated donor funding involving co financing ofWorld Bank funded projects. Ideally, such information

35

should be available for all donors who fund research and for all countries who receive external fmancing to learn lessons as regards the relative importance of domestic and international funding of research. Research currently under way by Pardey on the financing of agricultural research in developing countries would throw more light on this issue.

The World Bank is the largest external funders of NARS. Therefore the information below, while not complete, provides some useful insights. The discussion demonstrates that the World Bank funding is overwhelmingly concentrated in Africa. Further, in all regions, Bank funding of research is concentrated in a few countries. Countries most successful in agriculture seem to rely little on World Bank funding for research. This raises complex questions. Certainly there is more research underway in countries receiving Bank funding than would be the case without. But to what extent has it substituted for, rather than complementing domestic financing of research? To what extent have the issues of stable domestic support for research been postponed due to the high level of external support?

sc. Patterns of World Bank and Related Donor Funding

In 1994, the World Bank's agricultural portfolio contained 371 projects in 97 countries, 185 of which were projects with research components in 68 countries. Total World Bank commitments to agricultural development during the 1988-94 period amounted to $20.2 billion, and research commitments of $2.2 billion. A comparison with a similar study done in the World Bank for a 1981-87 period showed that both the number of agricultural projects and the amounts committed to agriculture have declined significantly (e.g., from 467 agricultural projects, 230 projects with research components and overall commitments of$23.2 billion). The drop is greater in real terms than the nominal amounts suggest.

Yet commitments to research as a share of agricultural project commitments has increased from 6.5% to 11%. Indeed, commitments to research have increased in absolute terms as well. The greatest increase has been in the Free Standing Agricultural Research Projects, FSARPs (62%), although research components in agricultural projects has also increased by 29%. Even if 10% ofthose resources committed by the World Bank, other co financing donors and governments through these projects are deployed to NARS­CGIAR collaborations, the returns to them might well be very high. Exploration of partnerships between World Bank funded projects in support ofNARS, the CGIAR centers, foundations and universities of industrial and developing countries involved should become a matter of high priority both on a country by country basis and at the regional levels.

The largest number of agricultural projects are in SSA (140) with 38% of the share of the total projects, but the expenditures on research are even more disproportionately higher in SSA relative to other parts of the developing world, SSA's share in agricultural projects with research components being 44% compared to 14%-15% each in EAP, SAS and LAC. The differences among regions are even more striking when Free Standing

36

Agricultural Research Projects are considered. Sixty percent of those are in Africa and only 16% in South Asia, relative to 4% each in EAP and LAC.

Thus the World Bank: certainly increased its emphasis on investment in agricultural research, particularly in the part of the world with a large number of small, poor and agriculturally poorly performing countries where domestic priority to research has often been in question. In contrast, although the amounts lent for agricultural development by the Bank are large in EAP and SAS, there is little investment in agricultural research (see figures 2 and 3), and its lack is particularly striking in EAP. But this is perhaps because national research systems of this well-performing region are well funded by governments. There appears to be no demand for external assistance for agricultural research. Indeed the World Bank:' s agricultural research commitments had declined from 17% to 6% in the EAP region, although the EAP region constitutes the highest recipient of the World Bank funded agricultural development projects in the developing world.

Figure 2 Figure 3

REG 10 N A L DIS T R IB U TlO N 0 F W 0 R L D BANK 1988-1994 DOLLAR

COM M IT MEN T S TO A G R IC U L T U R E

EAP 27%

MNA 13%

SAS SSA 16% 14%

ECA 7%

23%

REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF WORLD BANK 1988-1994 DOLLAR COMMITMENTS TO

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

SSA 47%

ECA SAS 1%

MNA EAP '7% 6%

The share of the World Bank (54%) and that of the co financiers (25%) in total project funding is also substantially greater in Sub-Saharan Mrica than in SAS (47%) and EAP (17%), respectively. In EAP on the other hand, where the World Bank's share in total agricultural or research project financing is smaller and similar to that in SAS, the share of cofinanciers is minuscule (see figure 4a, table 4b).

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Figure 4a Figure 4b

« (f) (f)

0.. « « z LU :2

9 « (f) ...... 0 « ...J LU (f)

1aYk~-r~-T~~~

00% 8Jlk 7tJ'k €O% 00% 4(]'/o

31'k 2Jlk 10'/0 0'10

« (f) (f)

0.. «« z LU :2

o « (f)« 0 « ...J LU (f)

oCo-firm::a-s I oCo-fincn:a'S •I

But small countries in Asia (e.g., Nepal) are also highly donor dependent, both in terms of the share and number of donors financing research. The IF AD-led initiative needs to place a special emphasis on the reforms needed to deal with the problems of small NARS regardless of their regional location.

Yet these facts need to be interpreted with caution because a large share of the World Bank: lending to agriculture and agricultural research is explained by lending only to a few countries in each region (see figure 5). Due to the small size and a large number of countries in SSA, such concentration is less acute in SSA than elsewhere. Even then lending to Kenya and Nigeria together (see figure 5) constitutes 28% of the total in SSA, but to India and Sri Lanka constitutes 78% in South Asia, Indonesia and China 83% in EAP, and to Brazil 58% in LAC. The results are similar when loan and credit amounts are considered.

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FiaureS

MAIN WORLD RECIPIENTS OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH COMMITMENTS

Algeria, Morocco, Yemen MNA Turkey ECA Kenya Nigeria

6% 7% 1% 1% 16%

EAP 6%

China Intin,n.:..,,;";

46% SAS India Sri Lanka 21% 16%

In Latin America due to a much smaller level ofWorld Bank: assistance and its relatively greater concentration in a single country, namely Brazil, the World Bank: and related donor funding for research is perhaps less significant than in Africa. However, incorporation of the activities of the Inter-American Development Bank: will in all likelihood change this picture. Information on the activities of other donors will provide a more thorough perspective on how to combine donor financing optimally with domestic financing.

SD. Optimally Combining Domestic with Donor Funding

Recent papers on sustainable financing of research in Africa and elsewhere stimulated by USAID, SP AAR and so on, suggest several general principles ofgood fmancing:

• An increasing share offunds must come from domestic resource mobilization if research systems are to be productive and sustainable;

• Cess (or check-offs) on a per unit basis, on the amounts going through the market and directed explicitly to funding research, as distinct from general contributions to the exchequer, is perhaps the most effective way of ensuring funding stability and predictability, creating stake among farmers in the outcome of research, improving domestic research management and increasing accountability to the ultimate clients;

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• External assistance pulled together from several official sources into a single pot, rather than aid to specific projects and equipment, would be a more desirable way to ensure that it is deployed to high-priority research areas;

• Donors are however unlikely to undertake the reforms necessary to support cofinancing since they consider immediate accountability to their domestic constituencies in visible forms, e.g., technical assistance from donor countries, building and laboratories, essential to maintain support from their constituencies;

• Debt for research arrangements sound attractive but are likely to be bogged down by the unwillingness or the inability ofgovernments to contribute the recurrent resources needed for research;

• Private sector or the NGOS are unlikely to be an important long-term source of research funding, and are causing an unnecessary diversion of attention from the critical public-finance issues;

• Formulation of domestic capacity for the responsible management of research funds, including transparency and accountability to a wide set ofdomestic stakeholds--including particularly the farming community--is essential early in the process to ensure effective use of the resources on a long-term basis;

• If donors contribute most ofthe resources, they are likely to become a substitute for both domestic resource mobilization for research and the management of the research process.

From the viewpoint of the future, to these principles should be added the need for institutional pluralism, including a greater blend of support from private foundations directly to universities and research organizations in developing countries, to foster partnerships with their researcher counterparts in developed countries through flexible, competitive, transparent, accountable and highly professional basis, as well as the increased role for farmer representation in research.

SE. A Proposal for Developing a New Complementary Funding Mechanism to Existing Ones

• Assuming that 90% of the budgets of the developing countries most in need of NARS strengthening now go to salaries as is currently the case in Kenya compared to the 65% or 70% which is more desirable (and similar to the level which existed in the case of tea and coffee in Kenya in the early 1980s), the equivalent of about 20% of the current budget of developing countries NARS will need to be set aside on a sustained predictable basis for the research systems to begin to operate with 30% operating support.

40

• This assumes that low priority programs will not be easy to kill outright but will receive less funding in practice over time.

• A certain portion of the contributions will be made by developing countries and others by developed countries.

• The share of the funds which come from external financing, ifkept in international banks with the interest being deployed for operating costs, will go a longer way than those held locally in developing countries in view of the likely devaluation of currencies until their economic performance improves considerably.

• Assuming a 10% rate of return on the investment of funds, resources at least equivalent to the current size of the research budget may have to be available in the form ofan endowment for doubling the supply of recurrent resources.

As an example, ifKenya's current research budget is nearly $3.5 million, under an extreme assumption that all additional support is provided by external sources, in the case ofKenya, it implies a fund of $7 million in a foreign bank as an endowment.

Ifa third of those resources are raised domestically, the size of the external endowment would diminish proportionately. The share ofexternal funds would diminish over time as domestic resource mobilization for research increases.

The sections below address the issues ofhow the research funds would be used more productively than before.

9. NARS RESEARCH POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

A recent T AC stripe study on the role of the CGIAR in strengthening NARS is a useful overview of the context in which NARS-CGIAR interactions might be viewed. The Nickels study identifies six steps in the process ofa sound research system:

• research policy formulation; • constraints/potential identification; • research program development; • resource allocation; • program execution; and • monitoring and evaluation.

Strong NARS are those that carry out all six stages of research effectively and can respond effectively to the changing external and internal environment.

41

According to the study external support for strengthening NARS has focused on:

• the formulation ofagricultural research policy and strategy;

• improvements in research organization and management;

• establishment or strengthening of physical and technical facilities;

• provision ofoperating funds;

• advocacy role at the national and international levels.

Technical support has entailed:

• provision ofgermplasm;

• consultancy services;

• training;

• training and other materials;

• seminars, workshops and field visits.

Collaborative research functions have included:

• participation in the development and implementation of research programs;

• development of regional collaborative research networks;

• establishment ofother networks. • strengthening representation of the internal stakeholders, such as universities,

the private sector and farmers' organizations in the research process.

Virtually every analysis ofNARS has recognized what the Nickels' report also stresses, namely, that some external input has had a negative impact on NARS. By provision ofoperating funds, it has encouraged governments to overextend as regards recurrent costs of agricultural research and paid inadequate attention to the issues of long term sustainability. The provision of consultancies has reduced rather than enhanced the development of local skills and capacity and so on.

Others have stressed problems posed in setting research priorities, among other things, by the proliferation of donor programs (176(?) in Tanzania), their tendency to operate in isolation ofeach other and to provide operating costs for their specific research programs (Ndiritu). The ISNAR and World Bank reports have also stressed the need for consolidation and integration oforganization and management, e.g., between crops and livestock, and for the elimination of low priority of research programs. But progress has been slow.

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9A. Priority Setting in NARS

Research priority setting should be a dynamic process in the context of numerous constraints and opportunities. For example, both traditional export crops and new cash crops are important in the farming systems, they are a means of risk aversion in period of droughts and a source of food security. Tree crops are an important source of maintaining soil fertility and securing property rights, in addition to their critical importance in exports, particularly in the poorest developing countries. High-value cash crops such as fruits, vegetables and flowers are also labor intensive and their importance is growing in a more liberalized domestic and external trade context. Reflecting this reality the NARS should have a much broader research agenda than do the CGIAR centers.

The framework for setting research priorities established by CORAF and ASAARECA takes the role of export crops into account. It recommends a two-way matrix for research involving commodities on the one hand, and natural resource management in specific ecoregions in which those commodities are grown on the other. Its diagrammatic presentation is shown in figure 6.

Figure 6

TYPOLOGIES OF AGRO-ECOLOGICALL Y BASED COMMODITY SYSTEMS

Population Density

Agro-Ecological Regions

I I CommoditiesI I I I

! Maize based Cassava Based

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Physical and demographic dimensions are added to this typology, including considerations ofpopulation densities, economic considerations such international trade possibilities, transportation costs, costs of inputs and outputs, scientific considerations such as the likelihood of obtaining research breakthroughs and socio-political considerations, such as the incidence ofrural poverty and urban poor. These various considerations would create a multi-dimensional objective function, rather than the cube shown in figure 6, in which research priorities would be optimized.

Currently there is little socioeconomic input into the strategic thinking on research policy in many NARS. Rather, socioeconomics is treated as a separate research area in much the same way as are soils and crops. A serious consequence ofthis phenomenon in developing countries is the inattention to public sector investment in research and development of export crops. It has been collapsing in recent years in Africa despite its economic, ecological and social importance. The private sector has not taken up the slack as it has in the more advanced countries such as Malaysia or Chile. But, as pointed out earlier, even in those countries private sector research is limited. Another example is the inattention to research on issues which concern women farmers. This may increase attention to labor-saving rather than labor-using technologies.

In an effort to improve interaction and partnership between the NARS and the CGIAR system, the IF AD-led initiative should aim to fill the gap in international assistance to the research and development of the traditional export crops (such as cotton and tree crops), as well as new high value crops from the viewpoint of the farming systems of small farmers, as well as addressing the problems facing women farmers. The CGIAR system's effort to address the problem of cash crops through the ecoregional approach is a necessary first step in this context, but it is not sufficient. Even though overtly expanding the CGIAR mandate to include research on export crops seems to have been difficult, with the support ofkey donors active in the export-crop sector, the NARS-CGIAR partnership effort may help to establish partnerships with those key international research actors who still maintain expertise, but whose presence in international research has been on the decline, namely, CIRAD, the British (---), and the U.S. It should also involve A VRDC, the private sector, and the developing countries who have a strong research record, e.g., in the case of cotton, Zimbabwe and India, or in the case of palm oil, Malaysia, and so on.

Indeed, an area in which the NARS-CGIAR partnerships can contribute to the development ofNARS in a complementary way to that of the CGIAR centers and regional organizations may be by providing the necessary global and long-term perspective and using its convening power to engage key global actors as appropriate, namely, the universities and the private sector of the industrial countries, the universities and farmers' organizations in developing countries, donors, as well as the ministers of agriculture or science and technology, women's organizations, and so on.

To summarize, interactions between the NARS and the CGIAR centers are likely to be most productive if the NARS-CGIAR partnership initiative

44

• relates the content of research issues to the organizational support needed to NARS;

• becomes an active partner with other key actors in assisting NARS in the development and implementation of overall priorities, in the context of which CG activities are assessed and carried out at the national and regional levels;

• draws on the historical and comparative experience, including the colonial period, of the advanced industrial and developing countries, to learn lessons on the ingredients for sustainable institutions and their productivity;

• goes beyond technical analysis to mobilize domestic and donor, political as well as financial, support;

• simultaneously starts small by using the specific high-priority collaborative research programs that are already under way between the centers and NARS as a laboratory for devolving responsibilities, bringing in additional partners as necessary; and thereby

• demonstrates impact to generate greater demand for improved policy, management and organization research at the global, national and regional levels.

10. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

The paper has explored a variety of issues. It suggests that the case studies of NARS-CGIAR partnership initiative would benefit from:

• focus on specific high-priority research issues as well as generic organizational problems which cut across regions, e.g., the problems of small NARS;

• take a holistic view of the research continuum and scope from the farmer to the scientist and in terms of the interactions of sectors, resources;

• explore ways of bringing in the necessary actors, e.g., ministers and other leaders ofgovernments, farmer groups, universities in developed and developing countries, key donors, private foundations, together with the NARS, regional organizations and the CGIAR centers;

• develop the much needed consensus for the specifics of reforms at several levels through concrete and analytically sound reviews of issues outlined in this paper; with a view to develop research organizing principles suited to particular regional needs;

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• identify concrete steps for region-specific and global reforms needed, including who needs to do what, when and how;

• address the funding problem at the national as well as the regional level;

• institute principles private foundations use in the organization and funding of research, including, perhaps, creating an international foundation for research;

• establish a timetable for action after the needed reforms have been identified and consensus on them is developed.

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