SCIENCE | AGRICULTURE | CURRENT AFFAIRS

"Although considered by many to be a success story, the benefits of productivity increases in world agriculture are unevenly spread. Often the poorest of the poor have gained little or noth­ing; and 850 million people are still hungry or malnourished with an additional 4 million more joining their ranks annually. We are putting food that appears cheap on our tables; but it is food that is not always healthy and that costs us dearly in terms of water, soil and the biological diversity on which all our futures depend." —Professor Bob Watson, director, IAASTD
The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Devel­opment (IAASTD) , on which Agriculture at the Crossroads is based, was a three-year collab­orative effort begun in 2005 that assessed our capacity to meet development and sustainabil-ity goals of:

• Reducing hunger and poverty
• Improving nutrition, health and rural livelihoods
• Facilitating social and environmental sustainability

Governed by a multi-stakeholder bureau comprised of 30 representatives from government and 30 from civil society, the process brought together 110 governments and 400 experts, rep­resenting non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, producers, consumers, the scientific community, multilateral environment agreements (MEAs), and multiple interna­tional agencies involved in the agricultural and rural development sectors.
In addition to assessing existing conditions and knowledge, the IAASTD uses a simple set of model projections to look at the future, based on knowledge from past events and existing trends such as population growth, rural/urban food and poverty dynamics, loss of agricultural land, water availability, and climate change effects.
This set of volumes comprises the findings of the IAASTD. It consists of a Global Report, a brief Synthesis Report, and 5 subglobal reports. Taken as a whole, the IAASTD reports are an indispensable reference for anyone working in the field of agriculture and rural development, whether at the level of basic research, policy, or practice.