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Abstract
Humanity is facing its greatest challenge. To produce 70%
more food by 2050 without destroying the environment
means doing much more with less. Partly due to the
abundant food and record-low food prices achieved by
the Green Revolution, overseas development assistance
for agriculture dropped from over $20 billion in the 1980s
to as little as $3 billion in 2006. Stagnation in the yields of
major crops such as rice, wheat and maize followed, and
the status quo finally crumbled with the food prices and
price spikes of 2008, 2010 and 2011. Today large segments
of the global population are threatened by the depletion
or degradation of natural resources. Making a bad situation
worse, climate change further threatens agriculture by increasing the risk
of droughts and floods, affecting temperatures and crop growing seasons
and altering the distribution of pests and diseases. Agriculture holds
enormous potential to reduce poverty in the developing world, strengthen
the sustainability of our global food system, and rebuild and revitalise fragile
communities so they can move from dependency to self-sufficiency. A
holistic approach is now needed to take scientific innovations and move
them along the chain into farmers’ hands and people’s stomachs. No one
organisation can achieve that alone. This paper highlights how science has
helped in the past, and outlines what it is going to take to boost agriculture
in the future. Science is and always will be the backbone of CGIAR work,
but now CGIAR is geared up for ‘science plus’. CGIAR is aggregating
resources and disciplines as it works side by side with partners to reduce
rural poverty, improve food security, nutrition and health while sustainably
managing natural resources.