Is international agricultural research a global public good? The case of rice biofortification

Abstract

The status of international agricultural research as a global public good (GPG) has been widely accepted since the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. While the term was not used at the time of its creation, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system that evolved at that time has been described as a ‘prime example of the promise, performance and perils of an international approach to providing GPGs’. Contemporary literature on international agricultural research as a GPG tends to support this view and focuses on how to operationalize the concept. This paper adopts a different starting point and questions this conceptualization of the CGIAR and its outputs. It questions the appropriateness of such a ‘neutral’ concept to a system born of the imperatives of Cold War geopolitics, and shaped by a history of attempts to secure its relevance in a changing world. This paper draws on a multi-sited, ethnographic study of a research effort highlighted by the CGIAR as an exemplar of GPG-oriented research. Behind the ubiquitous language of GPGs, ‘partnership’ and ‘consensus’, however, new forms of exclusion and restriction are emerging within everyday practice, reproducing North–South inequalities and undermining the ability of these programmes to respond to the needs of projected beneficiaries.

Keywords:

• international agricultural research
• CGIAR
• global/international public goods
• rice science
• biofortification

Notes

¹Interview, HarvestPlus Advisory Board member, 18 September 2007.

²‘Engineering Rice for High Beta Carotene, Vitamin E and Enhanced Fe and Zn Bioavailability’; for project overview see: http://www.grandchallenges.org/IMPROVENUTRITION/CHALLENGES/NUTRIENTRICHPLANTS/Pages/Rice.aspx[Accessed 11 May 2010].

³Interview, Harvest Plus program management team member, 27 January 2006

⁴Improving Nutrition of Poor Women in Asia: Counterpart Project: 5945 - REG: Rice Breeding to Reduce Anaemia in Asia (2001–3). See www.adb.org/documents/prf/nutrition.asp[accessed on 10 November 2005].

⁵The Golden Rice research was funded by Rockefeller Foundation under the International Rice Biotechnology Programme (IRBP).

⁶Interview, nutritionist, University of the Philippines, Los Baños, 21 June 2006.

⁷Interview, Harvest Plus project management team, 17 January 2006.

⁸Interviews, nutritionists: USAID, 25 January and 2 February and HarvestPlus, 28 March 2006.

⁹Interview, IRRI senior management, 24 May 2006.

¹²Interview, IRRI senior management, 5 December 2006.

¹⁴Interview, NARS Scientist, 16 January 2007.

¹⁰For current membership of the Humanitarian Board see: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who1_humbo.html [Accessed 24 May 2009].

¹¹Interview, IRRI senior management, 5 December 2006.

¹³‘Grand Challenges in Global Health Project’ by the ProVitaMinRice Consortium. Available from: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content5-GCGH/GCGH1.html[Accessed 24 October 2010].

¹⁵Interview, HarvestPlus, nutritionist, 28 March 2006 (original emphasis).

¹⁶‘Copenhagen Consensus 2004: today's challenge, tomorrow's opportunity: the experts list’, available from: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/default.aspx?id=158 [Accessed 24 October 2010].

¹⁷Interviews, IRRI and PhilRice scientists, June 2007.

¹⁸Interview, nutritionist, HarvestPlus, 26 March 2006.

¹⁹Interview, nutritionist, WHO, 14 March 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Brooks

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful comments. The financial support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council, which funded the work on which this paper is based, is also gratefully acknowledged.