Global Cassava Development Strategy Homepage FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Crop and Grassland Service
- BACKGROUND NOTE
- WHAT IS GCDS?
- VISION FOR CASSAVA
- GOAL FOR GCDS
- ESSENCE OF GCDS
- ENDORSEMENT OF GCDS
The vision for cassava is that it will spur rural industrial development and raise incomes for producers, processors and traders. It will contribute to the food security status of its producer and consumer households.
The goal of the GCDS is to improve the focus on enhancing food security and generating higher income for cassava farmers and others involved the in cassava subsector through the development of sustainable production and processing technologies.
The following principles of the Strategy have been approved:
- it should be demand driven and/or market oriented and take advantage of market opportunities for traditional and new products;
- it should follow an integrated approach, involving, simultaneously, production, processing and marketing;
- it should have catalysts and champions to facilitate cassava development;
- it needs to be applicable to a wide range of stakeholders and implemented at various paces and levels starting from national, through regional to global;
- it should be science-based and address issues of sustainability, gender and equity, and potential environment impact;
- it should address food security concerns for disaster mitigation and recovery situations.
Recognizing that the GCDS is an approach to cassava promotion and development, which rely on national and regional strategies that together will make possible a concerted development of cassava in producing countries, there was a consensus among the stakeholders and participants in the Validation Forum to endorse the "Global Cassava Development Strategy", as detailed in the revised document of April 2000.

An implementation plan adopted at the Validation Forum provides a basic mechanism to facilitate cassava development activities, spanning around the following main areas:
- coordination;
- information management and promotion;
- linkages and integration;
- integrated projects to promote and improve cassava;
- development of global action plans.