| Abstract |
In the strategic plan, “Seeds of Innovation,” CIMMYT outlined a focus and set its overall goals in conjunction with partners. Now we have taken the vision expressed in that document—one that sees CIMMYT as a key player in a set of global partnerships to improve the livelihoods of families who depend on maize and wheat farming systems—and made it operational. CIMMYT took inputs from donors and research-for-development partners very seriously, in particular the recommendations from the center’s fifth external program and management review (EPMR). That feedback and in-house expertise were applied to develop a clear, detailed business plan for CIMMYT research, which will focus on the development, delivery, and deployment with partners of nine, crucially important flagship products. Eight-hundred million of the world’s inhabitants still suffer hunger, many of them children whose poverty robs them of the opportunity to achieve their true potential. Millions of the impoverished of all ages, many of them women, live lives of overwhelming drudgery and physical labor on small farms in the developing world. Malnutrition and under nutrition impair their health and productivity. At the same time, rapid urbanization in the developing world has increased the need for affordable food in the cities, food that farmers in those countries want to produce but cannot because of the severe constraints they face. In the coming years, CIMMYT will focus its research on products that directly address these areas of desperate need. The products will be readily available and adoptable for the farmers of the developing world. This annual report describes the products, why they are needed, how we plan to develop them, and what we expect to achieve. For the first time, the report also comes with a CD ROM that contains the full text of CIMMYT’s business and medium-term plans, new studies on the impacts of the center’s work, reports from our monthly electronic newsletter, and other documents that provide an overview of activities and accomplishments in the past year, as well as what we expect to accomplish in coming years. |
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