Invitation to Participate in Feed the Future E-Consultation

From May 9-27, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) will be coordinating a major on-line consultation, focusing on the research strategy of the US Government’s new Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative. It will be a chance for researchers and other stakeholders to consider and provide input to the US government on FTF’s research priorities, and to discuss how best to support and engage with this important new program.

You are invited to participate in this consultation. Click here to register.

Feed the Future is an ambitious new initiative to reduce global hunger and alleviate poverty (http://www.feedthefuture.gov/), using a country-driven approach. It seeks to be a “whole of government” effort, marshaling the significant resources of the United States government in the pursuit of progress on some of the most vexing of all human challenges. A framework research strategy guiding global agricultural research investments under the initiative will be released shortly and made available through www.feedthefuture.gov/research.html. The strategy was undertaken to help focus research under the initiative in ways that most effectively advance the goals of reducing poverty and hunger. Research investments in the broad areas of productivity gains, production systems, and nutrition and food safety are emphasized.

If FTF research investments are to achieve real success, they must draw on the creativity, insights, and energies of the various communities of researchers working on agricultural development and hunger alleviation. To that end, USAID and USDA are partnering with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Board on International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD) to convene a consultative process for engaging the US and international research communities to respond to the strategy and to identify research opportunities that support FTF’s research goals. There will be an open Forum June 21-23 in Washington, DC to discuss and refine the e-consultation outcomes.

Participants in the e-consultation will work to define a set of ten to twenty research challenges under the FTF research strategy. From there, participants will develop sets of actionable research questions and projects that collectively support each challenge and, overall, FTF’s goal In addition, the consultative process will identify opportunities for coordination of efforts through innovative partnerships across institutional and disciplinary boundaries and for enhancement of the impacts of research through human and institutional capacity development.

We seek participation and input from a wide cross-section of researchers concerned with agriculture, hunger alleviation, and human development, and all others interested in commenting on and engaging with FTF’s research strategy. Please also share this invitation with colleagues and networks that you think would like to be involved.

For further information about this whole process, visit: http://www.aplu.org/page.aspx?pid=2014.

To register for the e-consultation, visit: http://www.aplu.org/page.aspx?pid=2014.

Montague W. Demment
Professor, Department of Plant Sciences
University of California, Davis
Email: mwdemment@ucdavis.edu
http://glcrsp.ucdavis.edu/