Do the poor really benefit from agricultural research? It’s a question older than the Green Revolution. Have farmers who work small plots increased their yields? Have the poor gained as consumers of cheaper foods? Has agricultural growth presented the poor with an open door to more jobs and more money?
While the contributions of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its national partners in food production are well established, the extent to which the poor have benefited from their research remains controversial.
More and more donors are asking the CGIAR whether their investments in the developing world have paid off by reducing poverty.The CGIAR has responded by forming a special panel of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to document the extent to which agricultural research is a sound investment for helping the poor and to determine whether it has bigger payoffs when research priorities are better-targeted to meet poor people’ s changing needs.The Standing Panel for Impact Assessment (SPIA) requested that IFPRI, on its behalf, develop and coordinate a study to both assess the CGIAR’s impacts and help develop means to strengthen capacity for such poverty assessments.
