IAASTD Reports

International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development(IAASTD) has issued comprehensive reports on agriculture (link via The Meaningfulness of Little Things . From their Press Release http://www.agassessment.org/docs/Global_Press_Release_final.doc:
"The authors have assessed evidence across a wide range of knowledge that is rarely brought together. They conclude we have little time to lose if we are to change course. Continuing with current trends would exhaust our resources and put our children’s future in jeopardy.

Professor Bob Watson, Director of IAASTD said: “To argue, as we do, that continuing to focus on production alone will undermine our agricultural capital and leave us with an increasingly degraded and divided planet is to reiterate an old message. But it is a message that has not always had resonance in some parts of the world. If those with power are now willing to hear it, then we may hope for more equitable policies that do take the interests of the poor into account.”"


From Executive Summary:
"The main challenge of AKST (Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology )is to increase the productivity of agriculture in a sustainable manner. AKST must address the needs of small-scale farms in diverse ecosystems and to create realistic opportunities for their development where the potential for improved area productivity is low and where climate change may have its most adverse consequences. The main challenges for AKST posed by multifunctional agricultural systems include:

· How to improve social welfare and personal livelihoods in the rural sector and enhance multiplier effects of agriculture?

· How to empower marginalized stakeholders to sustain the diversity of agriculture and food systems, including their cultural dimensions?

· How to provide safe water, maintain biodiversity, sustain the natural resource base and minimize the adverse impacts of agricultural activities on people and the environment?

· How to maintain and enhance environmental and cultural services while increasing sustainable productivity and diversity of food, fiber and biofuel production?

· How to manage effectively the collaborative generation of knowledge among increasingly heterogeneous contributors and the flow of information among diverse public and private AKST organizational arrangements?

· How to link the outputs from marginalized, rain fed lands into local, national and global markets?
Options for Action
Successfully meeting development and sustainability goals and responding to new priorities and changing circumstances would require a fundamental shift in AKST, including science, technology, policies, institutions, capacity development and investment. Such a shift would recognize and give increased importance to the multifunctionality of agriculture, accounting for the complexity of agricultural systems within diverse social and ecological contexts. It would require new institutional and organizational arrangements to promote an integrated approach to the development and deployment of AKST. It would also recognize farming communities, farm households, and farmers as producers and managers of ecosystems. This shift may call for changing the incentive systems for all actors along the value chain to internalize as many externalities as possible. In terms of development and sustainability goals, these policies and institutional changes should be directed primarily at those who have been served least by previous AKST approaches, i.e., resource-poor farmers, women and ethnic minorities.[1] Such development would depend also on the extent to which small-scale farmers can find gainful off-farm employment and help fuel general economic growth. Large and middle-size farmers continue to be important and high pay-off targets of AKST, especially in the area of sustainable land use and food systems."
GLOBAL SUMMARY FOR DECISION MAKERS here.
Both the reports are not fully approved by Australia, Canada and USA. The recently announced 700 million package of Bush is discussed in the May 4th post of The Automatic Earth.However well researched and well meaning these suggestions may be, it is not clear how they can be implemented in
a world with only two kinds of international institutions -- weak and dysfunctional .