Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) is one of CGIAR’s Global Integrating Programs, focused on addressing the policy, institutional, and market constraints to sustainable and equitable economic development and rural transformation. Such roadblocks include regulations restricting adoption of technologies by smallholder farmers, inefficient allocation of public resources, market failures or missing markets, weak property rights, restrictive gender norms and practices, and exposure of smallholders to shocks and risks. PIM aims to address these constraints through four main channels: global agenda setting, national policy support, program and market innovations, and capacity development.

The evaluative study focuses primarily on PIM’s external partners; this includes partnerships where PIM is engaged by another organization as a service provider and trusted advisor. The objective is to undertake an in-depth analysis of PIM partnerships and to elicit lessons on the key factors contributing to their success in achieving outcomes. The aim is to generate: (1) an inventory of partnerships; (2) an understanding of the motivations for partnership formation, and of the partnership dynamics in promoting innovations and policy change; and (3) an assessment of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to foster stronger future partnerships. This evaluative study serves the dual purposes of accountability to CGIAR partners and funders and of learning. The primary intended users are CGIAR researchers and partners. The findings and lessons learned will also provide input into the implementation of new initiatives under One CGIAR.

Efforts to promote the development and agricultural value chains area common element of strategies to stimulate economic growth in low-income countries. Since the world food price crisis in 2007-2008, developing country governments, international donor agencies, and development practitioners have placed additional focus on trying to make agricultural value chains work better for the poor. As value chains evolve to serve new markets, they tend to become less inclusive. For example, if a value chain for high quality rice arises within an economy, it is inherently easier for those who sell rice to retailers to source that high quality rice from larger farms with the ability to control quality than from dozens of smallholder farms. As a result, the normal path of value chain evolution can be biased against smallholders; hence it is important to understand what types of interventions can make value chains more inclusive while also making them more efficient.

The purpose of this review is to assess the extent to which the research outputs of Flagship 3, cluster on The Policy Environment for Value Chains (cluster 3.1) of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) have been used to inform decisions and behaviors of representatives of government organizations, development agencies, researchers, donors, private firms, nongovernment organizations, and other users. The assessment both reviews the achievement of past milestones as well as looks forward to how re-searchers should support the trade agenda in developing countries going forward through their research and communication of research and what should be the focus in the research agenda for developing countries. There are already ongoing and forming activities for which strategic guidance, decisions on allocation of resources across activities, or other research decisions could benefit from this assessment. Areas for prioritization include evaluation of policy changes proposed by policymakers or proactively investigated by the PIM trade team (e.g., reduction in domestic support, lowering tariffs), a trade and nutrition database, work on trade and greenhouse gas emissions, future AATM editions, improving data on trade flows, analysis of impactful events such as COVID-19 and large-scale droughts on world markets and value chains, work on the future of trade multilateralism, research on global value chains and non-tariff measures, and research on advancing value chains for competitiveness and economic development.

This report analyses PIM’s 391 peer-reviewed 2018 and 20191 publications. We highlight key gender findings and discuss the challenges faced by researchers in doing gender analysis, with a view to documenting lessons learned and improving practices. It is hoped that the gaps and strengths identified in this report will be useful inputs for future research under PIM and One CGIAR.

Research since the 1990s highlights the importance of tenure rights for sustainable natural resource management, and for alleviating poverty and enhancing nutrition and food security for the 3.14 billion rural inhabitants of less-developed countries who rely on forests and agriculture for their livelihoods. The specific rights or combination of rights held by an individual, household, or community affects whether they have access to land and resources, as well as how those can be used and for how long. Equally important is the degree to which landholders perceive their tenure to be secure. Landowners are more likely to engage in land and resource conservation if they perceive that the likelihood of losing their land or resource rights is low. Between 2013 and 2021, the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) supported researchers to explore the drivers of tenure insecurity and their consequences, as well as mechanisms that can enhance tenure security. Their work focused on rights held by individuals and households, as well as collectively held rights. Studies found that tenure insecurity has a variety of negative consequences for natural resource management, agricultural productivity, and poverty reduction, but the sources of tenure insecurity differ for men and women, and for individual, household, and collective lands. Statutory recognition of customary rights, multistakeholder processes (MSPs) such as for land use planning, and organized social alliances such as Indigenous peoples’ groups have emerged as important mechanisms for securing rights or enhancing access to collectively held lands. Long-term partnerships, ongoing engagement, and training for actors at multiple scales increase the likelihood of successful implementation of tenure reforms. Further research on tenure security can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially by clarifying how customary tenure can provide security and how tenure affects decision-making in multistakeholder platforms.

This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. Despite numerous international consultations and an increased number of actors, there has been no real growth in international assistance, except for the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of developing countries in Asia and Africa, with some making great strides in small farmer development and in achieving structural transformation of their economies. Some have also achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG2, but most have not. Not only are some countries, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lagging behind, but they face new challenges of climate change, competition from emerging countries, population pressure, urbanization, environmental decay, and dietary transition. Lagging developing countries need huge investments in human capital, and physical and institutional infrastructure, to take advantage of rapid change in technologies, but the role of international assistance in financial transfers has diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only set many poorer countries back but starkly revealed the weaknesses of past strategies. Transformative changes are needed in developing countries with international cooperation to achieve better outcomes. Will change in the United States bring new opportunities for multilateral cooperation?"--