There is little disagreement on the fact that many of IFPRI's researches resulted in the change of perceptions of politicians and policy makers throughout the world. And as I argued in one of my earlier write-ups in this column, Bangladesh had also benefited immensely from IFPRI's invaluable -- but not invariable -- insightful research investigations in the realm of food production and distribution. The benefits continue to come through as the economy gradually moves from subsistence to commercial farming and from parastatals to private initiatives.

Realities and revisions

But IFPRI, with its new captain at the cockpit (Joachim von Braun), attempts to revisit the strategies set out, say, decades earlier. Why a revisit? Firstly, because progress on reducing hunger and malnutrition in the developing countries, sordidly, slowed down over the last decade. For example, the food insecure proportion of the developing world's population fell steeply from 37 to 22 per cent over the course of the 1970s and 1980s but slightly from 20 to 17 per cent during the 1990s. There was an absolute decline of seven million food insecure people in the earlier period compared to barely three million per year in the later period. In the backdrop of the Millennium Development Goal of cutting the number of hungry by half by 2015, a chiming challenge seemingly awaits all of us and IFPRI is of the view that a 'business as usual" scenario is unlikely to achieve the goals. "Research is needed on the barriers to accelerating this sluggish progress on eliminating hunger in the food-rich world".

Secondly, IFPRI rightly reckons that the policy environment has changed dramatically over the decades. Central government authority, unlike that in 1970s or even 1980s, has been getting more diffused and many more actors have growingly been getting involved in food policy. "Layered societies" of the past have been replaced by "network societies" of the present and ipso facto, good working relationship with key ministries no more seem to translate food policy research into improved policies. The dawn of the democratic governance with many stake holders could be the core of the argument. But more importantly, perhaps, is the fact that the basic role of the government has been witnessing a change; so are the global economy, the structure of the farming sector and global and local food industries and retail business. Markets liberalisation and growing globalisation emerged as both problems and prospects. Researches need to reign over the problems to turn them into prospects so that developing countries could ride on the wave.

Thirdly, new technologies obviously offer great promise for advancing food security but not with an undifferentiated access. Researches are getting market driven and robustly going to the rich as the days elapse. To make research a public good, it is needed to identify policies to assure that food-insecure people have access to it. The policy research challenge is to identify and target high priority biological research and development to solve critical problems faced by small farmers and poor consumers. "More information is also needed to help integrate new technology with farmers' own knowledge and with organic and agroecological approaches to agriculture".

And finally, according to IFPRI, global health crises pose significant threat to food insecurity and nutrition. Allow me to cite some nerve-wrecking statistics from IFPRI's document on strategy named "IFPRI's Strategy: Toward Food and Nutrition Security (2003)". The world at large is afflicted with devastating diseases that go to deter development in developing countries. Reportedly, HIV/AIDS affected 36 million people in 2000 with serious setbacks: millions of children became orphans, disrupted social bonds, and undermined people's capacity to engage in collective actions. There is also, in evidence, a correlation between AIDS and tuberculosis. As Malaria often strikes at harvest time, it also threatens food security. On the other hand, micronuitreint malnutrition, often called "hidden hunger" afflicts two billion people with devastating effects on health and productivity.

Food and focus

Travelling with research agenda for long 25 years or so, IFPRI aims to lay its research agenda on the basis of pitfalls, promises and potentials. Its long experience with food security research was the key to arrive at judicious selection of priorities. Meantime, there have been a number of significant paradigm shifts in the evolutionary process:

-Shift from farms and small holders to poor consumers and food security;

-Shift of attention from agricultural production to a broader notion food system;

-Emphasis on the preservation of natural resource base upon which the sustainability of agricultural development hinges;

-And shifts from general statements like reduction of food insecurity to specific target setting: why, when and by how much.

Priorities and policy planks

IFPRI adopts four sets of criteria to determine its priorities. It sets out policy solutions that go to: (a) reduce hunger and malnutrition; (b) address major emerging issues affecting food security; (c) turn IFPRI's research as international public goods and (d) confer with and respond to stakeholders to select essential food policy research.

There are three policy planks upon which priorities seem to sail upon. First comes research on global food system efficiency, food system governance and food system innovations. The document on strategies and priorities delved into the details on each of the research item. Second, the capacity strengthening of research collaborators in developing countries to carry out food policy research with a new dimension of looking at cooperation with university networks and open universities. And finally, communications of research output to public, policy makers and the press with the motive of awareness raising.

Research themes

IFPRI has submitted twelve interlinked strategic research themes for the next decade. Some of these are "old generation" researches having forceful implication in the days to come and some are "new generation" researches tuned with the changing time. But allow me to highlight only those that I deem close to Bangladesh's concerns: (a) global food situation and scenarios of policy risks and opportunities; (b) urban-rural linkages and non-farm rural development; (c) food and water safety policies; (d) policy making and the role of the state, the private sector and civil society; (e) food system in disaster prevention, relief and rehabilitation after crisis; (f) trade negotiations related to agriculture; (f) policies addressed to hidden hunger, enhanced food and diet quality of the poor; (h) food and nutrition related science and technology policy i.e. molecular biology, biosafety; (i) future of small holder farming and (j) policies and interventions for sustainable poverty reduction and nutrition improvement.

Bangladesh and IFPRI

The changes that IFPRI had noticed on the basis of its experience, clearly applies to the case of Bangladesh. The pace of our poverty reduction seems to have paused for a while; available modern technologies are yet to reach the resource poor farmers; "layered" society of the early years have been replaced by a "network" society. Both of its agriculture and food production sectors tend to face chiming challenge from growing globalisation and trade liberalisation. Like IFPRI, Bangladesh needs to revisit some of its strategies in the light of the changes that have been shaping the world and its domestic front. It would perhaps not be an exaggeration to suggest that IFPRI could help with some of the researches that Bangladesh needs to meet the goal of poverty reduction. This could be comprised of three 'C's: commitments to the goal set, capacity building and communications. Commitments could only be translated into actions through indigenous capacity building. And lastly, both commitments and capacity building could result from good communications between researchers of IFPRI, Bangladeshi partners including various stakeholders and policy makers.

Abdul Bayes is Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University