2.4     Source    Transferred from CGIAR

3.1       Scope and content     The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is an informal organization of countries, international development agencies and private foundations that cooperate in underwriting a network of more than a dozen independent, international agricultural research institutes.  The co-sponsors of the Group are the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Development Program, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.  The Bank hosts the executive secretariat and provides the chairman of CGIAR.  The FAO staffs the secretariat of the Science Council, an independent panel of scientists and research managers who advise the Group on program and scientific matters.  The records in this fonds are those of the executive secretariat. 

The records reflect the two principal activities of the Consultative Group:  funding and evaluating the international institutes.  The Group’s activity is carried out through regular informal contacts, through consultation at yearly or semi-annual meetings, and through inspection visits to the centers.  The records document the debates on whether to fund new institutes or new programs within existing institutes; what is the healthiest relationship between the international institutes and national research and extension programs;  and how to manage the related roles of the Council and the Group, the two secretariats, and the four co-sponsors.  A substantial amount of correspondence also is created during the sensitive process of selecting Council members and choosing leaders of the institutes.

The records of the meetings give a bird’s eye view of the state of international agricultural research on topics ranging from  pest control to rice production to the state of post-harvest technologies.  Background papers, mission reports, priorities papers, instituted evaluations, minutes, verbatim transcripts, and correspondence range over every subject in agriculture.  Of particular interest are the debates on how to support the collection, evaluation and conservation of plant genetic resources, which ultimately led to the establishment of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources and a central fund to support it.  Changing research interests can also be followed, as well as the growing awareness of the role of women in agriculture, the increasing appreciation of the role of the small farmer, and the heightening concern over the fragility of environmental balance.

Of particular importance is the collection of publications and reports from all the institutes that are supported by CGIAR.  Through these publications, the regular evaluation reports, the institute work plans and the regular correspondence, the successes and failures of each institute can be charted.  The central files contain massive files on the institutes, often including such difficult to locate items as minutes of institute meetings. In the early 1990s a CGIAR project put a large body of the publications from the institutes on a set of 17 CD-ROMS; these publications and others are found in the series of institute publications.

3.2      Appraisal, destruction, scheduling  Routine records are destroyed in accordance with the General Records Schedules of the World Bank Group.  Printouts and work sheets created during the CD-ROM project were destroyed. For meetings where verbatim transcripts and audio and video tapes exist, the tapes are destroyed, except for meetings of special importance, such as the 1994 Ministerial level meeting or the 1995 twenty-fifth anniversary meeting, for which the videotapes are retained.

3.3     Accruals    Accruals are expected.

3.4      Arrangement      The records are arranged in four series and one file unit.           
                                         The series are:

1.       Publications of international agricultural research centers

2.     Compact International Agricultural Research Library project files

3.       Sound recordings

4.       Video recordings

The file unit is the speeches, addresses and outgoing memos and letters of S. Shahid Husain as Chairman of CGIAR, 1984-1987, less than 1 linear foot.

4.1     Conditions of access     Records are subject to the World Bank Policy on the Disclosure of

Information.

4.2     Conditions of reproduction Records are subject to the Copyright Policy of the World Bank

Group.

4.3     Language/scripts     English; some French and Spanish

5.3    Related units of description      WG IBRD/IDA 2, Central Files, 1946-1971, for files on the 

creation of CGIAR; WG IBRD/IDA 27, Records of the Agriculture and Rural Development Sector; WG

IBRD/IDA 44, Oral histories, for the interviews of Warren Baum and Michael Lejeune; WG IBRD/IDA

48, Records of the Consultative Group  for Food Production and Investment in Developing Countries. 

Records of the secretariat of the Science Council of CGIAR are in the archives of the Food and

Agriculture Organization in Rome, and the archives of the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller

Foundation have records relating to the creation of CGIAR and the early funding of the institutes.  The

US National Archives has a small quantity of records on the founding of CGIAR in Record Group 286,

Records of the Agency for International Development; copies of these records are in WB IBRD/IDA

51, Reference collection on World Bank history.  For current information and a selection of historical

documents, see the CGIAR website, www.cgiar.org.

5.4     Publication note      Warren C. Baum with the collaboration of Michael L. Lejeune, Partners

against hunger:  The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Washington, DC:

Published for CGIAR by the World Bank, 1986

7.2     Rules or conventions       Internal World Bank Group Archives rules

7.3     Date(s) of descriptions     2002-10-20