Alleviation of poverty is a central goal of the CGIAR. Beyond that it is generally agreed that the System's principal means to that end is through increased productivity in the agriculture (broadly defined) of poor countries. Such increases lead to higher incomes for producers and, simultaneously, to lower prices for the consumers of their products. The larger the portion of the work force in agriculture and the larger the portion of the average family budget spent on foodstuffs, the greater the effects of productivity increases in agriculture on real income and on an accompanying reduction in poverty. (See the note on Criteria and Framework for CGIAR Priority Setting for more on this theme.)
While the CGIAR has no evident means of targeting individual poor it can reach groups of poor - e.g., poor farmers relying heavily on cassava or poor urban dwellers relying heavily on rice. Indeed, since its inception, the System has concentrated its attentions on products of particular relevance to poor producers or to poor consumers and those groups have been the primary beneficiaries of the System's efforts. The instruments at the disposal of the System, then, have proven to be effective in achieving the aims of the Group. There is every reason to believe that such a strategy will continue to be fruitful in achieving those aims.
In this context, two considerations motivate this note. The first is that much is known today about the location of the poor, about their reliance on agriculture and its products, about relative degrees of poverty, about recent changes in income levels, and about their projection towards the future. The second is that the Centres have an ever greater capacity to focus not just on crops or systems of production but on the specific needs of the major environments in which the various crops and systems are utilized, e.g., on maize especially suited to acid soils or on resource-conserving management strategies for rice/pasture based systems in the lowlands of tropical America.
These considerations combine to make it possible and useful for the Group to review its focus on poverty. Should it choose to do so, the Group can give more attention to one or other cohort of poor. What follows culminates in three observations. The Group's reactions to the three can make the System even more effective in alleviating poverty.
