The CGIAR is an international group of representatives of donor agencies, eminent agricultural scientists, and institutional administrators from developed and developing countries who guide and support its work. The CGIAR receives support from many country and institutional members worldwide. Since its foundation in 1971, it has brought together many of the world’s leading scientists and agricultural researchers in a unique South-North partnership to reduce poverty and hunger.
The mission of the CGIAR is to promote sustainable agriculture to alleviate poverty and hunger and achieve food security in developing countries. The CGIAR conducts strategic and applied research, with its products being international public goods, and focuses its research agenda on problem-solving through interdisciplinary programs implemented by one or more of its international centers, in collaboration with a full range of partners. Such programs concentrate on increasing productivity, protecting the environment, saving biodiversity, improving policies, and contributing to the strengthening of agricultural research in developing countries.
The World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are cosponsors of the CGIAR. The World Bank provides the CGIAR System with a Secretariat in Washington, DC. A Technical Advisory Committee, with its Secretariat at FAO in Rome, assists the System in the development of its research program.