The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)

The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) is a stakeholder-led initiative that serves as a neutral forum for the discussion of strategic issues in agricultural research for development (ARD). It facilitates and promotes cost-effective partnerships and strategic alliances among ARD stakeholders in their efforts to alleviate poverty, increase food security and promote the sustainable use of natural resources.

EGFAR (www.egfar.org) is the GFAR web space, a 'virtual space' mimicking the physical GFAR space for discussion and action on ARD. EGFAR's general objectives are 1) to provide an interactive communication system among the stakeholders of Agricultural Research for Development (ARD); 2) to provide information resources relevant to ARD and enhance access to them, thus providing 'gateway (portal) functions'; 3) to build and allow access to 'knowledge pools' built through collaborative efforts among stakeholders in a few high priority areas identified by them.

In order to fulfill these objectives, EGFAR offers to its users: collaborative web pages where everybody can contribute, discussion fora, an updated and updatable news and events section, a newsletter, RSS feeds, RSS aggregators, a document repository, a special ARD-specific search engine and a database of organizations, soon to become a "Web Ring" of integrated ARD information sources.