One of our main roles as the UKCDS Secretariat is bringing people together and stimulating collaboration to make science work for development. This relies on us keeping up to date with important contacts in the development community and knowing who to reach out to when an opportunity or announcement pops up. We thought we’d take the time to share some influential groups in an area we’ve been considering this week.

We’ve been thinking a lot about food security recently because of our involvement in the EU-Africa High Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD). We represent the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills on the HLPD and reported on its recent decision to focus on food and nutrition security, and sustainable agriculture.

In the short report we highlight some of the main decisions from the recent meetings and include all of the relevant documents from the HLPD and the 4th EU-Africa Summit.

To share our report we’ve been contacting some of our communities of practice, and it got us thinking about the range of initiatives focussed on research into agriculture and nutrition for international development. In no particular order, here are just a few:

Tropical Agriculture Association
A professional network of individuals and organisations that contribute to international policies aimed at improving livelihoods in the rural areas of middle and low income countries. It also aims to encourage the efficient and sustainable use of local resources and technologies. UKCDS is a corporate member ofTAA and occasionally provides policy advice.

Biosciences for Farming in Africa 
A project designed to encourage informed discussion about the potential application of biosciences and genetics for farming in Africa.

The Montpellier Panel 
A group of international experts working together to make recommendations to enable better European government support of agricultural development and food security priorities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Panel, chaired by Sir Gordon Conway (one of our UKCDS fellows), includes experts in agriculture, sustainable development, trade, policy and global development.

Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition
An independent group of experts set up to provide effective guidance to decision-makers, particularly governments, on generating nutrition-enhancing agricultural and food policy and investment in low and middle income countries. It is chaired by Sir John Beddington (another UKCDS fellow) and the secretariat sits in the London International Development Centre.

Global Food Security Programme
The UK’s main public funders of food-related research work together through this programme to meet the challenge of providing the world’s growing population with a sustainable, secure supply of safe, nutritious, and affordable high-quality food using less land, with lower inputs, and in the context of global climate change and declining resources.

This is just a short list of some of the organisations we deal with that work on food security and agriculture for development. Can you think of any others worth mentioning? Is this kind of list useful? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

For our work update on the EU-Africa HLPD’s decision to focus on food and agriculture click here.