As I write this month’s blog my view is not from my office but from the window of a Delta Airlines Boeing 767, 10,000m above the Atlantic Ocean on my way home from New York, but more of that later.

It was good to have our former colleague and friend, Mario Herrero, with us in Nairobi for a week in September. Now with CSIRO, Mario was visiting the BecA-ILRI Hub to work with the team on Monitoring and Evaluation of the Australian funding to BecA which CSIRO manages. We took advantage of Mario’s visit to get him to present a seminar on the new report ‘African Livestock Futures’ of which he is principal author along with John McIntire and partners from IIASA in Austria. The report explores future scenarios for the African livestock sector. It makes it clear that there will be huge increases in demand for livestock products and unless there is significant investment in the sector many countries will be faced with the prospect of having to import very large quantities of livestock products. It has important messages not only for Ministers of Livestock and Agriculture, but Ministers of Finance, Prime Ministers and Presidents.

Fortunately there is some evidence that politicians are now beginning to pay more attention to agriculture and the livestock sector. At the meeting if the African Union Ministers of Agriculture in Abidjan in 2013 the AU was asked to develop a strategy for the livestock sector in Africa. The task of facilitating this has been given to AU-IBAR.

I am very pleased that the Director General of AU-IBAR has asked for ILRI’s input to the strategy. We received a visit from a small group of AU-IBAR staff to discuss the strategy and then five ILRI staff attended a write shop in Nairobi at which a start was made in drafting an issues paper. I am very grateful to Azage Tegegne, Mohamed Said, Henry Kiara, Maurice Ogada and Okeyo Mwai for representing ILRI at this meeting. This is an important opportunity for us to influence the future of the livestock sector on the continent and support a key strategic partner.

I spent a week in the USA from 22 to 26 September. For the first two days I was at a workshop at IFPRI jointly organized by the Independent Science and Partnership Council and the CRP on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. The focus of the discussions was on how agriculture can effectively contribute to human nutrition and what the role of the CGIAR should be.

We know that agricultural development and productivity increases do not necessarily lead to improved nutrition. India, where I lived for over 5 years, has made huge strides in agricultural productivity. Sixty years ago famine was common and now India can more than feed herself, but has some of the worst nutritional indicators in the world, especially in women and children, worse than many part of Africa. We need a strong CGIAR research program to understand how we can develop agricultural and food systems that not only provide calories but the protein, minerals and vitamins that come from a diversified diet. This will require research on nutritional education, stimulating demand for a diverse healthy diet, reducing the costs of production of nutrient dense foods, food processing and storage as well as policy research that can provide an evidence base to encourage politicians to move away from their current fixation on staple crops.

On 24 September the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture was launched in New York. This is a very broad alliance of governments, international agencies, NGOs, private sector and academia, including the CGIAR. So far about 100 organizations have joined. There is very high level commitment to the alliance as was evidenced by the presence of many ministers, heads of international organizations, CEOs and others. The US government underlined its support by John Kerry, US Secretary of State, hosting a reception following the launch event. The CGIAR was well represented with Frank Rijsberman making a statement on behalf of the CGIAR and the presence of several senior CGIAR staff.

Taking advantage of the many events in New York, including the UN General Assembly and the UN Climate Summit, the CGIAR arranged a CGIAR Dialogue Event on 25 September. Over 200 people attended to discuss how agricultural research can contribute to development challenges, from improving livelihoods, to mitigating climate change and what arrangements are needed for this to be effective. The emphasis was to hear the views of people mainly outside the CGIAR. Speakers and panelists comprised ministers, head of agencies, representatives of business, farmers and NGOs as well as researchers.

Iddo Dror and Tom Randolph from ILRI were also present and help organized sessions on ‘New Partnerships for Development Impact’ (watch the video) and ‘Nutrition, women and food systems’ (watch the video) – which were regarded as highly successful.

It is always difficult to assess whether such events are worthwhile. Certainly there was strong support for agricultural research for development from the attendees and for the CGIAR in particular, but that support was coming from people whom already support the CGIAR and as might be expected there were suggestions on how we can be more effective. Whether the fine words will be translated into more resources, or help secure our existing resource base will be the proof of the success of the event. There was a general feeling among the CGIAR participants that the event was successful and at similar events should be held in the future. I think if this is to happen it would be worth focusing future events on a particular topic and explore and discuss it in some detail.