ICARDA's Integrated Research at Benchmark Sites

ICARDA's Integrated Research at Benchmark Sites

Background

ICARDA and its NARES partners have fully committed themselves to tackle the challenges
of the dry areas through scientific research and capacity building. These challenges include
converging trends of
- scarce and variable water resources
- increasing desertification and loss of biodiversity
- increasing out-migration of adult males resulting in loss of traditional farming systems
and greater reliance on women as heads of households,
- high population growth rate and pockets of poverty
- increasing dependence of countries on grain imports for food security
- problems of access to international markets as a result of trade policies and subsidies

The conventional approach to agricultural research is not well equipped to address poverty
and sustainability as its often single-disciplinary and single-scale focus fails to deal with the
complexity of natural resource management, human behavior, and policy issues. Furthermore,
the increasing demand for research with diminishing resources requires that more efficient
modalities be adopted to effectively conduct the research and out scale the results.

To deal with the multi-faceted problems of rural poverty, ICARDA has joined other CGIAR
Centers in the development of an integrated natural resource management (INRM) approach.
Promising INRM strategies must be easily transferable to and applicable at other sites to be of
value towards the CGIAR ...