SDR/TAC:IAR/95/26.1
CONSULTATIVE GROUP ON INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
TAC SECRETARIAT
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
April 1996
Alain de Janvry
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
207 Giannini Hall, University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
November 15, 1995
Dr. Don Winkelmann
Chairman
Technical Advisory Committee
Via delle Terme di Caracalla
00100 Rome, Italy
Dear Dr. Winkelmann:
Please find enclosed the report requested by TAC, "Perspectives on Policy and Management Research in the CGIAR". This report was prepared by:
Alain de Janvry (France), University of California at Berkeley, team leader,
Gustavo Nores (Argentina), independent consultant, former Director General of CIAT,
Jock Anderson (Australia), The World Bank,
Robert Evenson (United States), Yale University,
Zafar Altaf (Pakistan), Secretary of Agriculture, Government of Pakistan, with the assistance of
Guido Gryseels, TAC Secretariat,
Eugenia Muchnik de Rubinstein, Catholic University of Chile, TAC member,
Hans Gregersen, University of Minnesota, TAC member.
The study started with a meeting held at ISNAR in April, 1995, to gather information and receive advice from TAC and representatives of seven CG Centres. Members of the parallel Institution Strengthening Research and Service panel were also present, allowing some early coordination between fee two panels. After first drafts had been elaborated, the Policy and Management Research panel met in Chile in early August. The revised draft was circulated by TAC to Centre DGs and extremely useful comments were received. The enclosed document incorporates these comments in as much as the panel agreed wife them.
A few caveats on fee report. One is feat fee way fee team worked wife only two brief meetings did not allow for in-depth discussion of fee issues and fine-tuned reconciliation of eventually divergent points of view, compared to fee way it is done in external reviews where fee team cohabits and interacts through fee process of development of fee report. Hence, parts of fee report written by different authors remain less integrated than in an external review document, and fee panel chair inevitably has a larger responsibility in defining fee ultimate content of fee report, wife fee associated arbitrariness. It is consequently possible that not all panel members would be in agreement wife every detail of the report, although there is evident general accord. In addition, because agreement is harder to obtain at a distance, some of the issues are perhaps not as sharply formulated as they would have been, had in-situ writing been possible. The other is that the task was huge compared to the very limited time allotted. Finally, no panel can be fully comprehensive to cover all facets of social science research in the System. As a consequence, this report focuses more on policy than on management research and more on economics than on the other social sciences.
The basic finding of the panel is that policy and management research, as well as the essential complementary socioeconomic research, is thriving in the CG system, not only in the lead centres for policy (IFPRI) and management (ISNAR, IIMI) research, but throughout the Centres as well. This is evidenced by rapid expansion of the field of inquiry which now absorbs 15% of the System's budget and 18% of its scientific personnel. We conclude, however, that expansion of the social sciences is fully warranted and that it is essential for success in solving the broader and increasingly complex problems which the CGIAR is now addressing.
The panel makes a number of recommendations and suggestions. We stress in particular that close attention needs to be paid to the new actors and new institutions which are emerging as the role of the traditional public institutions in agricultural research (technology, socioeconomics, policy, and management) is being generally descaled and redefined. The Centres should both better understand the roles of these civil institutions and work in support of their functions in complement to those of public institutions. Many of the recommendations which are made are directed at sensitizing the panels of the forthcoming IFPRI and ISNAR external reviews to questions which this team did not have the opportunity of researching in sufficient detail.
As team leader, I want to commend the dedication and creativity of the members of this excellent panel assembled by TAC, as well as the effective participation of the three TAC members involved. They all went beyond the call of duty in spite of busy schedules and the few days officially assigned to the task. Guido Gryseels played more than an administrative role and provided key intellectual inputs to the contents of the report. It was a pleasure to work with them all.
I hope that the report will prove useful and remain available for further discussions and inquiries on its contents.
Sincerely yours,
Alain de Janvry
