9.1 IRRI's Major Accomplishments and Impact
9.2 The Last Five Years
9.3 Current Directions
9.4 IRRI's Future Role
This chapter presents the Panel's overall conclusions about IRRI as an institution: its past, present, and future. We discuss in turn IRRI's major accomplishments and impact, its strengths and weaknesses, its current strategic directions, its future role in rice research, and its future role within the CGIAR.
Among scientists and agricultural leaders in both developing and industrialized countries, the panel found a uniform judgment that IRRI has been a highly productive research Centre. The Panel shares this view. We cite five types of evidence.
First, beginning with IR8, IRRI has produced a long series of high-yielding rice varieties and breeding lines. Over the years, these have incorporated ever-improving elements of grain quality, short duration of growth, resistance to plant diseases and pests, and adaptability to different ecological settings. These varieties and breeding lines have been used widely in rice-growing countries around the world.
The modern, high-yielding varieties and associated farming practices developed by IRRI and by national research systems have had a very large impact on rice yields and production. In Asia, production doubled from 1966 to 1990 - a rise in annual totals from 240 million tonnes of paddy to 492 million tonnes. Prior to 1976, one-third of the gain came from increases in cropped area; from 1976 onward, almost all of it came from increases in yields.
Increases in rice output have benefitted the farmers who produced it. They have also benefitted consumers; rice production has not only met the demands resulting from population growth and rising incomes, but has been large enough to result in a downward trend in real rice prices over the last twenty years.
Second, the evidence beginning in the late 1960's of striking increases in yields from high-yielding varieties was a major influence in changing the perception of agriculture in developing countries. IRRI rices - along with CIMMYT wheats -demonstrated to policymakers in developing and industrialized countries alike that agriculture in the developing world could be a productive and dynamic sector of the economy, not a stagnant, backward drag on national development.
This change in perception resulted in major increases in the priority and the resources given to agriculture in national development plans and in donor programmes. These positive changes in policies toward agriculture, even though adopted unevenly in the developing world over the last twenty-five years, have brought large benefits to many millions of people.
Third, as a result of the early successes of high-yielding rices and wheats in the green revolution, national governments began to pay much more attention to their agricultural research systems, and IRRI has had a sustained and important impact in helping to strengthen national rice research. IRRI has helped to train some 7000 rice scientists and technicians from all parts of the developing world, among them many who are currently research programme leaders in their own countries. IRRI's collaborative research activities have helped to establish and raise standards of quality in national research systems. In some cases, IRRI has undertaken specific projects of institution-building to help strengthen agricultural research in particular countries. The national systems visited by the Panel were generous in their praise of IRRI's past work and strongly desirous of continued collaboration.
Fourth, IRRI has pioneered in numerous research fields related to rice beyond the continuous effort to raise rice yields. For example, IRRI has pioneered in studies of the economic and social impact of higher-yielding rice varieties. The Institute has been a leader in designing and introducing integrated pest management methods for rice-growing areas in developing countries. IRRI recognized early, and has led the way in studying, the significance of gender differences in rice production and in the distribution of the costs and benefits of new rice technology. These and other examples that could be cited testify to IRRI's admirable and sustained efforts to bring the latest scientific methodologies to bear on issues relevant to rice, and to help introduce those methodologies to IRRI's research colleagues in national systems.
Fifth, IRRI has played a major role in helping to create and sustain a global system of rice knowledge. Through INGER, through its compilations of data, through its training programmes, conferences, publications and in many other ways IRRI has contributed greatly to the development of a world-wide community of scientists concerned with rice and in continuous connection with one another.
These five types of evidence support the Panel's judgment that IRRI, in its thirty years of existence, has had a very large favourable impact on the world's rice farmers and rice consumers. On the other hand, there are important qualifications to the record of success.
First, the effect of IRRI's work has been highly uneven. IRRI's impact, so far as rice farmers are concerned, has been concentrated on the irrigated half of the total rice-growing area and some of the more favourable rainfed lowlands. Farmers in most rainfed areas have benefitted relatively little from IRRI's work.
Second, the large jump in the yield ceiling achieved early on with IR8 has not been significantly bettered in the twenty-five years since. This means that for many rice farmers who are already using the best varieties currently available there may be little more to gain until the yield ceiling is pushed up again - which has turned out to be a difficult research task.
Third, in intensive rice production, total factor productivity has been declining, which means that steadily more plant nutrients must be provided to the crop per unit of output. Moreover, on some intensively cultivated rice lands, including some of those on IRRI's home campus, yields have been steadily declining. These observations offer disturbing evidence that present intensive rice production systems may not be sustainable over the long run, and point to very important questions of research priorities for IRRI.
Fourth, there have been negative consequences for some people resulting from the adoption of new varieties and improved production practices. For example, women in many traditional settings who earned money processing harvested grain have been displaced by machinery used by men. For another example, in some cases there has been damage to the health of men and women rice farmers who use dangerous pesticides without proper precautions. To IRRI's credit, its own studies have contributed substantially to the identification of these costs and problems.
The Panel's net judgment is that IRRI's accomplishments and impact have been heavily positive, especially in contributing to the huge growth in rice production over the past three decades. Consumers and farmers with assured water supplies have been the principal beneficiaries; farmers in less favoured environments have benefitted much less. Experience has revealed new scientific issues of very great importance, particularly the long-standing plateau in the yield ceiling and the decline in factor productivity in intensively cultivated areas. Finally, it has become amply clear that some groups in societies where new varieties and cultivation methods are introduced may suffer adverse consequences.
In the last five years, IRRI has undertaken a radical transformation. This process has not yet been completed. As described more fully in earlier chapters, this transformation has included:
· a substantial and desirable shift of research resources toward the problems of farmers in resource-poor environments;· the adoption of ecosystem-based research programmes with both germplasm and resource management objectives and strong scientific links with national systems;
· the introduction of a new research management system - matrix management - that is a sharp departure from the previous system and, in the Panel's judgment, a significant improvement;
· a turnover of approximately 50 per cent of the internationally-recruited staff, while maintaining, in the Panel's judgment, a high overall level of scientific quality;
· a reduction in nationally recruited staff by 25 per cent, accomplished in a sensitive and humane manner;
· major improvements in the personnel, finance, and administration systems and in IRRI's plant and equipment; and
· radical improvements in the organization and functioning of IRRI's Board of Trustees.
It is evidence of IRRI's strength as an institution that it has been able to move forward with such large and far-reaching changes. The Board of Trustees and the management of IRRI have set and held to new policies with firmness and determination, and international and national staff at all levels have sought to carry them out with admirable dedication. It is not possible yet to judge the long-term outcome, but the early evidence is that IRRI may have been substantially rejuvenated, as was judged five years ago to be necessary. In Chapter 3 we report our judgment that while there have certainly been setbacks to the research activities as a result of the transformation, nevertheless through these recent years there has continued a considerable flow of research results, among them the following:
· interdisciplinary work among breeders, physiologists and modellers to produce an improved plant type and associated management system that is expected to raise the yield ceiling;· development of an interdisciplinary approach to the yield decline problem that is providing a better understanding of the research needed for its solution;
· establishment at IRRI of high quality biotechnology research that has made rapid progress in tissue culture, gene mapping and linkage studies, and the development of techniques for the regeneration of plants from protoplasts;
· continuing gains in the transfer of pest and disease resistance genes from wild rice species.
At the same time, the previous chapters have amply documented serious concerns at the present stage of IRRI's reconstruction:
· the increased emphasis on research in difficult environments, and the consequent decentralization of research to sites away from Los Baños, requires a larger share of IRRI's research to be conducted in collaboration with national systems; while the national systems welcome this prospect, collaborative research is inherently more complex to organize and accomplish, and calls for institutional innovation, travel, and other time-consuming processes that have placed large new demands on scientific staff;· multidisciplinary ecosystem-based research, managed through a matrix system, is considerably more complex than the previous model, and requires more time to be spent on paperwork and in consultation and conference, adding to the demands on scientific staff;
· these new demands on IRRI scientists are occurring at a time when many newly arrived staff members are still settling in to the IRRI research environment, and at a time when IRRI's core budget is being reduced;
· moreover, in order to finance its desired research programme at a time when core budget is declining, IRRI has increasingly relied on special projects, which require more time for project design, proposal writing and negotiation, and reporting, per unit of funds obtained, than do core funds.
For all these reasons, the Panel found an extraordinary level of pressure on IRRI's senior research managers, from the Director General through his Deputies to the programme leaders, division heads, and project coordinators. Scientists always, and properly, begrudge time spent on research management, but the extra management demands of new programme objectives and management systems seem to the Panel so heavy as to risk serious cost to research progress. The Panel was assured by a number of IRRI's scientist-managers that the demands of the matrix management system are better understood and being met with less strain than was true a year ago. Moreover, virtually all of IRRI's scientist-managers believe the benefits of matrix management outweigh its costs. Nevertheless, the Panel regards the extraordinary demands on IRRI's scientific management as a major challenge to the institution at present, and we have suggested specific actions to improve the situation:
· initiating a concerted effort to improve the efficiency of operating the research programme in a matrix mode;· providing the Divisions more authority to further their disciplinary capabilities and, in general, increasing the emphasis on scientific quality and disciplinary excellence;
· delegating greater autonomy to the managers of projects;
· avoiding 'tight coupling' of International Programmes with Research Programmes;
· exploring ways of improving the design and management of research consortia and networks.
In summary, IRRI has demonstrated that it is a strong and resilient organization, which has been able to embark on new programme objectives and a new research management system, with a largely new set of scientific leaders. Its principal weakness is that its scientist-managers are currently overstretched; they need time, understanding support from Board and top management, and a careful measuring of how much is to be asked of them.
Since the last external reviews in 1987, IRRI has prepared a strategy statement - IRRI Toward 2000 and Beyond - that is a significant departure from past practice in several important respects. We comment on three of these here.
First, in its new strategy IRRI has deliberately chosen to pursue equity objectives as well as total rice output objectives. Recognizing that its past work has benefitted principally farmers in favourable environments, IRRI now has committed itself to addressing rice production problems in less favourable environments. This creates an immediate issue for resource allocation: to what extent should resources be allocated to maximize benefits to poorer farmers, and to what extent should they be allocated to maximize rice production to the general benefit of consumers?
In practice, IRRI has given strong priority to expanding rice production. Of the four ecosystems, the two least favourable ones - the upland and deepwater/tidal wetland rice areas - are given some 17 per cent of the 1992 research budget, while 58 per cent of the budget is going to the more favourable environments - the irrigated and lowland rainfed areas.
The Panel supports these priority choices. We are deeply impressed, as we have indicated earlier, by the urgent scientific challenges of raising the yield ceiling and, especially, understanding and reversing the decline in factor productivity. Those are scientific issues central to the production of food needed for the world's growing population and the sustainability of the resource base for the bulk of the world's rice production. We believe that at present this requires the allocation of the great majority of IRRI's research resources to the production problems of the more favourable environments - although solving those problems for favourable environments will obviously carry spin-off benefits for other areas as well.
At the same time, we think it is sound for IRRI, with a smaller share of its resources, to undertake research, guided by equity considerations, on rice in less favourable environments.
Second, in its new strategy IRRI has committed itself to ecosystem research - that is, to understanding and improving production systems in an ecological framework. Part of what this will require of IRRI is reasonably clear - for example, breeding rices that will tolerate better the stresses of drought and temporary submergence. But part of what ecosystem research will require of IRRI is not at all clear, because an ecosystem requires understanding simultaneously as a biological and as a social entity, and there are few if any reliable methodologies as yet for such work. IRRI scientists addressing ecosystem research recognize that they must proceed on two pillars, germplasm on the one hand, and resource management on the other. To do this effectively will take the joint work of biological, physical, and social scientists and the development of new methodologies - new for IRRI and perhaps new for the world.
In our review, we have been well impressed with IRRI's growing use of new research methodologies. Simulation modelling, biotechnology, geographic information systems, quantitative pest ecology - these are all examples of research techniques IRRI is actively working to apply to rice problems, and to share with colleagues in national research systems.
We applaud, therefore, IRRI's commitment to the difficult task of conducting research in an ecosystem framework, and we have been impressed by the energy and imagination IRRI's scientists are bringing to these tasks. At the same time, we emphasize that, as TAC has said in its 1992 Priorities and Strategies paper, there is as yet no satisfactory paradigm to guide research on resource management. Consequently we believe the wise course for IRRI is to proceed carefully, with its national colleagues, to address primarily research issues related to difficult environments for which methodologies are in hand, and that promise to yield results not limited to the specific site where the research is undertaken. And we urge all of IRRI's stakeholders -Board, donors, national collaborators, fellow scientists around the world - to recognize that results are unlikely to come quickly.
Third, IRRI's new strategy necessarily requires more off-campus research and more collaborative work with NARS. The national systems, in the Panel's experience, welcome both IRRI's new emphasis on rice in unfavourable environments and IRRI's new stress on collaborative research through consortia. We urge that such consortia should incorporate the best of IRRI's (and others') experience. In particular, we have noted the valuable example of the Simulation and Systems Analysis in Rice Production (SARP), a network the purpose of which is to encourage research using advanced methodologies, so that the collaborators in the network are at the same time doing pioneering research and learning new research techniques. This approach is highly attractive to some of the best young scientists in the national systems. It is also highly rewarding to IRRI scientists who themselves are simultaneously helping to advance research and to expand the reach of the methodology. And it links both IRRI and national scientists with advanced institutions in industrialized countries.
For these reasons, we urge that strong elements of seeking and testing new methodologies be built into each of the new consortia. This will not only make them more attractive to national scientists, but will reflect accurately IRRI's objectives both to do research and to strengthen national research systems.
With rice production rising, and research capacity growing steadily in national systems, is IRRI needed longer? The Panel strongly believes that it is, for the following reasons.
Demand for rice will continue to grow rapidly as world population continues to rise to an estimated 6.7 billion by 2005. Making allowances for the changing share of rice in diets, and for changes in demand related to income growth as well as population growth, world demand is expected to rise to about 680 million tonnes of paddy by 2005, roughly a 45 per cent increase from 1988.
Increasing rice production by these amounts is not a simple matter of continuing past research and application patterns. On the contrary, rice research has encountered a number of exceptionally difficult scientific problems: raising the longstanding yield ceiling; finding the keys to sustainability in intensive rice cultivation; learning how to combine germplasm and resource management research to the benefit of rice growers in more difficult environments; protecting past yield gains by finding new sources of resistance to pests and diseases and of tolerance to stress. These are first-rank scientific challenges. To make headway on them will require mobilizing the best scientists in industrialized countries, in international centres, and in developing countries.
In the Panel's view, IRRI has a crucial role to play in meeting these challenges, not because of its size - by world standards it is not a large research centre - but because of its strategic opportunities for intellectual leadership. Through its close links with national systems, it can help identify and address the most serious problems of rice farmers. And through its links with advanced research centres, IRRI can bring to bear on rice, and help introduce to national rice research systems, the most modem of scientific methodologies - as it is currently doing with simulation systems and with biotechnology. IRRI's own research, if it is to play this leadership role, must continually incorporate new methods and new techniques as they become available. But it is not simply IRRI's own research, but its manifold communication and collaboration connections that permit IRRI to lead and energize the much larger scientific thrust that will be required to meet on a sustainable basis the growing world demand for rice.
The Panel has identified one of the most difficult scientific challenges - the problem of yield decline and declining factor productivity in intensively-managed irrigated rice lands - as warranting an exceptional effort. We have recommended that IRRI take the lead in organizing an international effort on this crucial problem, enlisting the best scientists around the world. The problem is clearly of a scale and complexity that could not be met by re-allocating IRRI's present resources. Extra funds and extra staff, for IRRI and for other scientific groups that would be part of this effort, will need to be sought for a period of years, probably extending for at least the rest of this decade.
By suggesting an exceptional effort on the problem of yield decline, the Panel does not mean to downgrade the importance and urgency of IRRI's work on other high-priority research objectives. Indeed, while a detailed budget review was not part of our terms of reference, we believe it is appropriate for us to express a sense of concern about the scale of resources available to IRRI at present, and particularly the prospect that those resources may decline somewhat over the next several years. It appears to us that IRRI is having to economize beyond the point of potential effectiveness, especially if near-term results are expected from the work on more difficult ecosystems.
The Future Role of IRRI Within the CGIAR
The Panel has considered three issues concerning the future role of IRRI within the CGIAR system.
The first relates to IRRI's role as the System's global commodity centre for rice. To the Panel, the term 'global commodity centre' means not simply that IRRI should be a world repository for rice germplasm, but as we have noted above, that IRRI should address - and lead co-ordinated attacks on - the most difficult research issues affecting rice. To fulfil this responsibility, IRRI must lead the way in solving the hardest scientific problems, such as the yield ceiling, blast, sustainability, and the decline in factor productivity. IRRI cannot and should not, of course, expect to deal with such major issues alone. They require coordinated assault from scientists in industrialized countries, in IRRI and other CGIAR centres, and in the national systems. IRRI's indispensable role is to organize and lead such combined efforts.
IRRI plainly accepts the responsibilities of being a global commodity centre, and its present strategy is more appropriate to that role than in the past. By committing itself to research on all rice-based ecosystems, it has undertaken to address the full range of equity issues more deliberately than in the past, and to address more explicitly than before issues of sustainability and resource management.
A second issue is IRRI's geographical range. The Institute's central concerns, plainly, are with Asia because of its predominance on the world rice scene. IRRI has in Asia a rich base of experience, long-standing and effective collaborations with national research systems, and a coherent if not compact travel and communications area. Clearly IRRI should continue to give the bulk of its attention to rice in Asia.
In Latin America, where three per cent of the world's rice is produced, there has been a long-standing rice group at CIAT, which has collaborated successfully with Latin American and Caribbean countries interested in rice. IRRI has served as a valuable back-up for the CIAT rice group, and has one staff person stationed at CIAT who coordinates the Latin American section of the world-wide germplasm evaluation network (INGER). In the Panel's view, these relationships are suitable and productive and should continue.
Rice in Africa is quite another story. Three international centres - IRRI, WARDA, and IITA - all have some role with respect to rice in Africa, where two per cent of the world's rice is produced. IRRI has country projects in Egypt and Madagascar, aiming to assist the strengthening of national rice research systems, and has been considering the possibility of providing assistance to capacity-strengthening in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa through a regional, not a country project. IRRI also has one staff person stationed at IITA who is the coordinator for the African section of INGER. WARDA is a regional rice research centre for West Africa, with close links to the national systems in that region. IITA had a rice research capacity some years ago, but this was transferred to WARDA in 1990. At present, IITA offers a base for WARDA's rice improvement research for the lowland valley farming systems.
Clearly there are important questions about the roles of the different centres involved in rice in Africa, and to examine and offer recommendations concerning them is one of the main charges to the Inter-Centre Rice Review Panel. We leave to that Panel the sorting out of roles south of the Sahara. We do venture the opinion, based on a visit by one of our Panel members, that the relationship between the Egyptian national rice researchers and IRRI has been long and productive. There would seem little to be gained by disturbing that relationship.
The third issue concerning IRRI's role in the CGIAR System on which we comment is the issue of 'ecoregional responsibilities'. This is a term that has been coined by TAC in its consideration of the future strategies and structure of the CGIAR System. TAC foresees a system that would include two main types of activities: centres with global commodity and subject matter/discipline activities, and centres with ecoregional activities. The latter would play major roles in research on the management of natural resources, on production systems development, and on socio-economics, public policy, and public management, in one or more ecoregions. In addition, centres with ecoregional activities would play major roles in strengthening national agricultural research systems in their regions to obtain the full benefits of the CGIAR System of centres. There is no existing model of a comprehensive ecoregional approach or programme, although various centres go some way toward serving some of the functions envisaged.
TAC expects that in preparing their next Medium Term Plans for the period 1994-98, each centre will consider to what extent it might propose to modify its mission, strategy, and programme to incorporate ecoregional approaches.
IRRI is clearly, in TAC's terms, a Centre with a global commodity mandate for rice, and there is no question that it has a major mission and research agenda in pursuit of that mandate. The question before IRRI is to what extent it wishes to propose to move toward ecoregional responsibilities for the warm humid and sub-humid tropics and sub-tropics, where no CGIAR centre at present has anything approaching a comprehensive ecoregional programme. The gap is partially covered by IRRI's programmes of research on rice-based ecosystems, but IRRI does not cover the rainfed areas where rice is not a major crop. While the Panel has been at IRRI completing its work and writing its report, a task force of IRRI staff members has started work on IRRI's Medium Term Plan for 1994-98. They have not reached any conclusions, nor has the senior management or Board of IRRI yet considered the issue. There is thus no IRRI proposal as yet for the Panel to react to.
Since it has been our responsibility to think hard about IRRI's future, however, we believe it is appropriate to offer a few comments.
The first is that, as we have noted, IRRI is still in a process of major transformation and rejuvenation, which is stretching - perhaps over-stretching - its management and staff. IRRI has an enormous work programme ahead, much of it in new and untried territory, and it will be several years before it can hope to be fully in command of the new programme objectives to which it has committed itself.
Second, IRRI has in fact already committed itself to major ecoregional work. Its approach to ecosystems approach requires IRRI to address resource management issues of large dimensions. Rice is by far the largest crop in several of the agro-ecological zones in Asia, so that in doing research on rice-based ecosystems, IRRI will necessarily be leading the way in learning and applying - and inventing - many of the relevant methodologies for doing research on ecoregions.
These comments could be read as recommending that IRRI should avoid assuming ecoregional responsibilities. We do not so intend them. We mean instead to emphasize that IRRI has already assumed major ecoregional responsibilities, and it should in our view be in no hurry to assume more. That is, it should continue to be an ecosystem-oriented commodity centre. By doing so, IRRI will in fact be contributing in a major way to ecoregional research, will be learning what it can and cannot most usefully accomplish, and will be contributing to the development of the necessary paradigms and methodologies for doing resource management research.
Moreover, in its ecosystems work, IRRI will be collaborating with national systems, and with other CGIAR centres. IRRI is already well launched on a cooperative research effort with CIMMYT and several national systems on rice-wheat rotations in Asia. Moreover, because of its work on upland rice-based ecosystems, IRRI is joining as a member of the international effort, coordinated by ICRAF, to find alternatives to shifting cultivation. IRRI's new ecosystem-based research consortia, establishing partnership arrangements with national systems (and potentially other CGIAR centres) to address commonly-agreed research agendas, could evolve in time into important joint instruments for assessing research progress and setting new research targets.
Thus in pursuing its new strategy, IRRI is in fact evolving in the direction of becoming a Centre with both global commodity responsibilities and ecoregional responsibilities for rice-based ecosystems in Asia. In the Panel's view, this evolution is highly desirable. It should be recognized by TAC and the CGIAR, and supported by appropriate budgetary allocations. But it would be a mistake, in our judgement, for IRRI to make a premature commitment to a broader ecoregional role or to try to foresee in detail today what can only become plain after a few years of experience.
