Publications /  Annual Report 1999

The passage into the year 2000 has brought with it—not coincidentally—a new vision of the global problem of hunger. The central role of poverty—how it defines a household’s access to food and how it limits a community’s options for improved productivity and economic growth—has become ever more evident. At the same time, it has become clear that there is no single means of resolving this most basic of human problems. The solutions must be holistic and flexible, with multiple components and participants. To be effective, they must address every sphere of human activity: the scientific, the political, the economic, the social, and the cultural.

In developing our 1998–2000 Medium-Term Plan, we narrowed the geographic scope of CIP’s direct program involvement. Priorities were assigned to constraint-based research according to the expected benefits in the poorest countries or regions, with improvements in the remainder of the developing countries considered as spillover. The appropriateness of this strong poverty orientation was confirmed as our major financial stakeholders increasingly manifested their concern that CGIAR research should provide—first and foremost—benefits to the poor. CIP, in this way, has forged a seamless combination of approaches: a global research program addressing strategic research needs has been directly aligned with local, on-the-ground responses to opportunities and constraints in the areas where poverty has the strongest hold.

While CIP gathered forces to move forward with the challenges ahead, events in 1999 distinguished it as a year of contrasts. On the one hand, we saw new global projections give substance to what many of us had been arguing for some time: root and tuber crops have not received the attention they merit in the spectrum of international agriculture research. The joint IFPRI–CIP publication Roots and Tubers for the 21st Century: Trends, Projections, and Policy Options for Developing Countries summarizes the new data: "Projections suggest that global demand for roots and tubers will increase by 50 percent between 1993 and 2020 to reach 927 million metric tons, with 95 percent of the increase in utilization occurring in the developing world. Sub-Saharan Africa alone will account for more than two-fifths of the increase in demand." These projections have direct implications for CIP’s mandate crops. In developing countries, the increase in demand for potato is projected at almost 110 percent; for sweetpotato, growth in demand is expected to be over 33 percent.

Recent studies have already shown these trends in action. Average annual growth rates in potato production during 1985–87 to 1995–97 in Ecuador (2 percent) and Peru (3.7 percent) were substantially higher than in previous decades. In developing countries as a whole, growth rates in potato production nearly doubled over the past 20 years, while the rates for other major commodities—such as maize, wheat, and rice—slowed. As potato output surged in Asia, sweetpotato continued to hold its ground, particularly in China, where these crops' contributions to local diets (potato) and use as animal feed (sweetpotato) have taken on remarkable dimensions.

As we witnessed the reaffirmation of the importance of our mandate crops in global food systems, however, we were confronted with sudden cuts in financing that may limit the scope of CIP’s contributions in helping these crops achieve their full potential. By no means have roots and tubers been singled out in the trend of reduced funding for international agricultural research. Their already low relative position on the scale of global priorities, however, has made the reductions, which were felt by all, more critical.

In 1999, CIP’s income dropped by 9 percent. This was the most drastic in a series of reductions that, since 1998, have resulted in restrictions of the Center’s research program, particularly for potato. Faced with this dilemma, CIP management decided to meet the problem head-on, making carefully considered cuts and rapid restructuring decisions. This meant trimming an already lean Center even further by reducing staff in regional offices and at headquarters, particularly in the areas of market research, breeding, insect pest management, true potato seed, and administration.

Other changes did not involve reduction, but rather consolidation. We commissioned two external reviews to analyze Center-wide activities in natural resource management and participatory research and to boost their effectiveness and integration. Linkage to the CGIAR Organizational Change Program helped us to refine CIP’s strategies, particularly in the area of knowledge management, and to give added momentum to our growing emphasis on team-building for research management and monitoring. Linkages to the CGIAR Gender and Diversity Program also opened pathways for fine-tuning the organization and ensuring that equity is not lost to efficiency.

Despite the general restrictions experienced in 1999, there were areas of growth that reflected ongoing confidence in CIP’s capabilities for managing research. We were entrusted with the coordination of the CGIAR Strategic Initiative on Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture, an activity that consolidates the collective knowledge of the CGIAR to coordinate and conduct research that could have a direct impact on the lives of urban and peri-urban populations. Our late-blight research program continued to grow—with advances that included the deployment of durably resistant varieties and the spread of the Farmer Field School program to Asia and Africa. The Global Initiative on Late Blight (www.cipotato.org/gilb) proved its value as convenor of a wide range of capabilities and interests behind one major research theme. On the molecular front, we continued to advance with fingerprinting and the characterization of germplasm and diseases. The great adaptability of CIP’s crops to emergency situations allowed us to continue to provide tools to rebuild agriculture in the wake of Hurricane Mitch and El Niño—and to respond to calls for urgent support from North Korea. CIP’s strategies and methods for disease detection and control placed vital tools in researchers' and farmers’ hands worldwide, while breeding and IPM work helped realize sweetpotato’s potential as a source of food, feed, and raw material for industrial products. Perhaps more important, CIP helped confirm sweetpotato’s promise in fighting vitamin A deficiencies in sub-Saharan Africa, thanks to the deployment of new varieties rich in beta-carotene.

In the area of natural resource management (NRM), CIP narrowed its focus to a few principal research objectives related to the Andean mountain region: identifying sustainable commodity management and land-use systems, protecting watersheds, and maintaining crop biodiversity. Several NRM research products are now being tested in development-oriented applications implemented by organizations in the region. This concurs with CIP’s NRM research approach, which emphasizes the participation of members of CONDESAN, the Consortium for Sustainable Development of the Andean Eco-region and the empowerment of community-level decision-makers. InfoAndina, the Latin American and Caribbean node of the Mountain Forum , plays an increasingly important role in generating the participation of these stakeholders by providing forums for information exchange, conferences, training, and project and consortium management.

CONDESAN and CIP have also supported the Governments of Peru and other Andean countries in their preparations for the celebration of the Year of Mountains, 2002. This yearlong series of global events will provide a unique opportunity to increase the profile of mountain regions worldwide, drawing attention to the need to counter the poverty and marginality that all too often characterize mountain populations. It will also foster understanding of the crucial role of mountains in safeguarding water resources as well as cultural and biological diversity, both of which are vital elements for future generations.

CIP received another vote of confidence when Bolivia, Canada, Ecuador, and Egypt—with the FAO and the UNDP as witnesses—signed a new agreement recognizing the Center’s new legal status as an international organization. This was followed by the signing of a new host-country agreement with Peru. These agreements will greatly facilitate CIP’s operations worldwide.

All of these accomplishments provide evidence of CIP’s determination to ride with a fast-paced agenda and to continue to deliver. At the same time, the Center aims to quickly regain solid financial health and achieve a level of funding that will enable potato, sweetpotato, and other roots and tubers to contribute more to the global food basket. This is a time of change for CIP, and for the CGIAR system and international agricultural research as a whole. Despite the challenges that arise, CIP has demonstrated that—like its crops and their native mountain ecologies—it is versatile, it is resilient, and its full potential has yet to be tapped.

Hubert Zandstra
Director General