IFPRI's 2020 Vision is a world where every person has access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life, where malnutrition is absent, and where food originates from efficient, effective, and low-cost food systems that are compatible with sustainable use of natural resources.
The 2020 Vision Initiative has two primary objectives:
- To develop and promote a shared vision and consensus for action for meeting food needs while reducing poverty and protecting the environment; and
- To generate information and encourage debate to influence action by national governments, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, international development institutions, and other elements of civil society.
The Initiative fully supports the Millennium Goals and seeks to contribute to their achievement by 2015.
To realize its objectives, the 2020 Initiative engages in four major activities:
- Generating timely, state-of-the-art information on key topics related to food, agriculture, and the environment, paying special attention to emerging issues that have long-term implications for feeding the world, alleviating poverty, and protecting natural resources;
- Support to the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT)
- Research Workshop: The Future of Small Farms
- Communicating the 2020 Vision challenges and related action program to raise public awareness of the world's food and environmental problems and what can be done to solve them;
- Providing fora for multi-stakeholder dialogue, debate, information sharing, and consensus building among policymakers, researchers, and leaders in nongovernmental organizations, private sector, and media through seminars, workshops, and conferences;
- 2020 Africa Conference on "Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020"
- 2020 Bonn Conference on "Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020"
- Undertaking pilot activities in research, policy communications, and capacity strengthening to support IFPRI's long-term strategy.
When prioritizing new opportunities for work, the Initiative focuses on the following criteria:
- Emerging issues that have substantial implications for food security and poverty alleviation;
- Forward-looking research and analysis;
- Creating forums that bring together divergent points of view to exchange information and build consensus;
- Following a multi-stakeholder approach;
- Adding value to ongoing processes outside and inside IFPRI;
- Reaching out to different audiences for IFPRI, including non-traditional actors, and in particular high-level policymakers; and
- Pilot or catalytic activity for IFPRI that addresses issues that cut across the Institute.
The 2020 Vision Initiative is managed by the Head of the Initiative based in the Director General's office at IFPRI. It is guided by an Advisory Council of distinguished individuals chaired by H.E. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
The contributions of the 2020 Vision Initiative have been formally recognized in various fora. The initiative won third place in the Critique and Awards Program (the award is given for a promotional or marketing campaign for an institution) from the Agricultural Communicators in Education in 1997. The environmental community lauded the contribution of 2020 research when the Foundation for Environmental Conservation awarded Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Rajul Pandya-Lorch, IFPRI's former director general and 2020 Vision Initiative Head, respectively, the 1996 Best Paper Prize for their article, "Food for All in 2020: Can the World be Fed Without Damaging the Environment?" in the journal Environmental Conservation. The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) awarded the 1998 Charles A. Black award to Per Pinstrup-Andersen, in part due to his contributions through the 2020 Vision Initiative.
In 2001, Per Pinstrup-Andersen received the prestigious World Food Prize, in part for his leadership of the 2020 Vision Initiative, which was recognized as "the most comprehensive and ambitious research and dissemination program ever undertaken on global food security". On July 31, 2002, the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) awarded IFPRI's Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, and Mark W. Rosegrant, Senior Research Fellow and IMPACT leader in the Environment and Production Technology Division, the award for Distinguished Policy Contribution, for their contributions to improving policies and programs, enhancing dialogue and debate, and raising public awareness through the 2020 Vision Initiative.
Pro-poor economic growth, empowerment of the poor, and provision of public goods effectively reaching the poor, are the foundations of any successful attempt to achieve a world without hunger. Although the specific policies that will be most appropriate will vary according to local and national circumstances, IFPRI has identified the following seven priority actions:
- Good Governance, including preventing and resolving conflicts and ending corruption;
- Pro-poor National and International Trade and Macroeconomic Policies, including making globalization work for poor people, expanding development assistance, undertaking debt relief, and conservation of plant genetic resources;
- Improving Markets, Infrastructure, and Institutions, including improving access to well-functioning markets for small farmers, less-favored areas, and food-insecure consumers, promoting private competitive markets, particularly in rural areas, and ensuring that infrastructure investments, capital subsidies, and markets benefit the rural poor;
- Protecting the Poor and Investing in their Human Resources, including improving access to health care, assuring clean water, safe sanitation, and child care, fighting "hidden hunger," ensuring food safety, educating girls and boys, and providing strong social safety nets responding to the diverse causes of poverty and hunger;
- Improving Access to Productive Resources and Remunerative Employment, including promoting broad-based agricultural and rural development, fostering secure urban livelihoods, promoting civil society organizations, and empowering women;
- Expanding Appropriate Research, Knowledge, and Technology, including investing in propoor agricultural research, making use of the agroecological approach, tapping the potential of conventional agricultural research, exploring the potential of modern agricultural biotechnology, and bridging the "digital divide"; and
- Improving Natural Resource Management, including overcoming water-related constraints, managing soil fertility, promoting sustainable development in less-favored areas, assuring property rights and collective action, and addressing global warming.
It is expected that these actions will contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Goals by 2015.
For more details, see the document Reaching Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020, which describes the priorities and responsibilities to help spur policymakers and others to take the necessary steps that are now so long overdue.
During the 2020 Africa Conference, the Conference Advisory Committee developed a statement, a draft of which was shared with conference participants and thereafter finalized, designed as a set of guidelines, or a framework, pointing the way toward a food- and nutrition-secure Africa. The highest priority actions were identified as:
- Invest in raising agricultural productivity, especially among small farms, thereby addressing the food availability and income poverty aspects of food and nutrition security within the larger context of policies for agricultural and rural development. The sustainability of agricultural productivity requires strong attention to environment and natural resources, especially soils, watersheds, and biodiversity. Invest in processing for more value addition and quality assurance in the supply chain of agricultural products.
- Foster macroeconomic growth and stability facilitated by free access to domestic, inter-regional, and international markets and trade; a more cohesive and louder African voice in the World Trade Organization (WTO); better investments in the assets of the poor; more effective management of vulnerability to shocks, including through household, national, and regional food storage; and greater investments in infrastructure to lower transportation and communication costs and encourage rural-urban and intraregional linkages.
- Invest in human capacity by addressing the education needs of women, girls, and boys; upgrading the professional skills of farmers and other rural producers; and meeting the need for higher education to produce better-educated and more informed actors and stakeholders who can implement actions for nutritional improvement.
- Invest in pro-poor public health policies and actions, in particular the prevention, control, and management of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, to foster food and nutrition security and raise labor productivity.
- Strengthen governance and public accountability and end conflicts. If these basics are not met, little can be done for sustainable food and nutrition security.
For more details, see the document A Way Forward from the 2020 Africa Conference