ICARDA Caravan 6

From the Director General

CARDA is now 20 years old. They have not been easy years; agricultural research for a fragile environment is difficult.
        What have we learned in 20 years? If I were to highlight a single point, it would be the dynamic nature of agricultural research. Those who read the first issue of Caravan at the end of 1995 may remember why the title was chosen: because such research moves from place to place; may carry untold wealth; but must also move, at times, through uncharted territory.
        Nothing highlights the changing, dynamic nature of agricultural research better than the Green Revolution itself.  A few years ago, we were being told that it had failed--the world was still hungry; it was not reaching the poorer farmers; it was encouraging monocropping, loss of biodiversity, environmental damage--indeed, at times, it seemed that the Green Revolution was responsible for every evil known to mankind.
        Today, we have a more mature understanding of the Green Revolution; it was actually a success to the extent that it was ever meant to be. It averted a catastrophe in world food supplies. To be sure, we know now that concern for scarce resources such as water, soil and genetic diversity must be an integral part of research planning. We also realize that benefits must reach farmers who cannot afford large investment in technology. But I suspect that none of this is news to the pioneers of the Green Revolution. They always knew what they were doing. They also knew what they were not doing. It was a  rescue operation, and we have moved beyond it, as they always knew we would.
        This is expressed in ICARDA's new Medium-Term Plan. Our  crop-development strategy  revolves around increasing yield and stability over time, with special emphasis on less-favored environments and low-input systems. Emphasis will be on: decentralization and farmer participation in crop improvement; improving water-use efficiency at the farm level; integrated pest management; rangeland and pastoral systems; feed resource use and animal products;

and conserving the natural resources
of land, water and biodiversity. We will be pursuing methods of crop development that keep biodiversity in the field, as well as promoting its conservation in situ. And we will continue to take a farming systems approach, trying to balance production

and environment within the context of the farm itself.
        The dynamic nature of research may also be seen in changes in research technology and methodology. This year saw the appearance of a sheep cloned by Scottish scientists. But in fact, biotechnology has been quietly at work for some years, and will raise many new issues of safety and legality. Geographical Information Systems, or GIS, can transform the world into a giant database which can be manipulated at will; we must learn to harness it to the real world so that it can be used for the development of agricultural research. Software is needed to manage complex multilocation experiments. All of this is in progress at ICARDA; meanwhile, in computing, Expert Systems are on the horizon, and much else besides.
        If the new technology is to be exploited effectively in the developing world, there is a need to train the rising generations of national scientists and give them hands-on experience with the new research tools. Train-the-trainers and colleague-to-colleague approaches will play a big part in this.
         Agricultural research is broadening its approach; it is going farther upstream and farther downstream with every passing day. It is dynamic. That, to me, is the chief lesson of these two decades.
         The next 20 years are poised to bring a lot more.

Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy
Director General