A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture and the Environment, 1995

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC (the policy arm of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) of 15 international agricultural research centres, 13 of which are located in developing countries, ‘to mobilize agricultural science to reduce poverty, foster human well being, promote agricultural growth and protect the environment’), became, in the words of its director-general, Pei Pinstrup-Andersen, ‘increasingly concerned at the apparent complacency of the international community about the future of the world’s food situation’ (IFPRI, 1995a). As a result, in late 1993, IFPRI began an initiative looking forward to the year 2020 ‘to identify the critical issues that must be confronted if the world’5 growing population is to be fed and the livelihoods of today’s poor and hungry are to be improved’. This initiative, called A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture and the Environment, had as its goals: ‘to seek consensus about the problems of ensuring adequate future food supplies while protecting the world’s natural resources foi future generations, to create a vision of what the future should look like, and tc recommend steps that must be taken immediately to make that vision come true’