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With most bilateral and multilateral aid allocations overlooking sector-specific programming, there is a gap in terms of available, unallocated capital to support country and regional agriculture and food security plans.
The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) is a response to this gap and to specific calls to scale-up long-term agricultural and food security assistance to low income countries made at the G8 L’Aquila Summit and the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh. Today, the GAFSP is a multilateral trust fund that coordinates donor support for country-led agricultural and food security investment.
The GAFSP operates as a multilateral mechanism with pledges from the USA, Canada, Spain, Korea, Gates Foundation, and Ireland of $914 million over its first three years. Investments made already include support for:
- seed varieties and better water management techniques in Bangladesh
- improved access to seeds, fertilisers and technology in Haiti
- reduced hillside erosion and bolstering productivity in Rwanda
- collective action for commercialisation of smallholder farmers and farm management training in Sierra Leone
- affordable credit and better access to technology in Togo
The GAFSP includes both public and private sector financing windows. The public sector window assists strategic country-led or regional programs that result from sector-wide country or regional consultations and planning exercises such as CAADP in Africa. The private sector window is designed to provide long and short term loans, credit guarantees and equity to support private sector activities for improving agricultural development and food security.
The GAFSP is implemented as a Financial Intermediary Fund for which the World Bank serves as Trustee. The World Bank also hosts a small coordination unit that provides support to the GAFSP Steering Committee.
Countries in which GAFSP is active:
More on the GAFSP:
- Global Agriculture and Food Security Program
- Presentation on the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (Committee on World Food Security CFS36)
- G8 2009 Summit in L'Aquila
- Pittsburg G-20 Partnership
A new initiative that brings together leading pastoralists from Ethiopia and Kenya and researchers to discuss and advance solutions to pastoralist issues, recently met for the second time in Kenya. The 'University of the Bush' is designed to link debate with action in the drylands and aims to enable pastoralists to engage with, comment on, critique and input into how pastoralist-relevant research is proceeding. "The University is an innovation in itself, drawing on tradition but enriching research," explains Jeremy Lind, a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and researcher with Future Agricultures Consortium.
Despite a significant growth in food production over the past half-century, one of the most important challenges facing society today is how to feed an expected population of some nine billion by the middle of the 20th century. To meet the expected demand for food without significant increases in prices, it has been estimated that we need to produce 70–100 per cent more food, in light of the growing impacts of climate change, concerns over energy security, regional dietary shifts and the Millennium Development target of halving world poverty and hunger by 2015. The goal for the agricultural sector is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, rural development, environmental, social justice and food consumption outcomes. However, there remain significant challenges to developing national and international policies that support the wide emergence of more sustainable forms of land use and efficient agricultural production. The lack of information flow between scientists, practitioners and policy makers is known to exacerbate the difficulties, despite increased emphasis upon evidence-based policy. In this paper, we seek to improve dialogue and understanding between agricultural research and policy by identifying the 100 most important questions for global agriculture. These have been compiled using a horizon-scanning approach with leading experts and representatives of major agricultural organizations worldwide. The aim is to use sound scientific evidence to inform decision making and guide policy makers in the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy support. If addressed, we anticipate that these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide, while improving the synergy between agricultural policy, practice and research. This research forms part of the UK Government’s Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project. 
Professor Sir Gordon Conway, based in the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is leading a small team advocating for increased and more appropriate European donor support for agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The genetic diversity of the grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits that we grow and eat is crucial for helping farmers to respond to current and future challenges such as population growth and climate change. But land clearing, population pressures, overgrazing, environmental degradation and changing agricultural practices are eroding plant genetic diversity.