According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) there should be unprecedented shifts in income distribution.
“Half to one billion people who are currently underfed largely they are too poor to buy sufficient food, will continue to go hungry.”
FAO further stressed that in all of the fields of science, there is none that is more basic to the needs of humanity than agricultural research. FAO in a review of agricultural research management noted down that “management skills obviously were not adequate , and hence a constraint.”
In industrialized countries research management has been a concern for years but a fair amount of management knowledge, expertise and capability has been generated and passed down from generation to generation.
In developing economies however, there are few agricultural research organization with indigenous management experience. The task of training is hinged, while resources particularly trained staff are limited.
Based on an extrapolation of data reported in an external program review, there were approximately 115,000 agricultural scientists in developing economies, all of these would benefit from an introduction to agricultural research project management while about ten percent would need the basics of research institution management.
There is a great demand for basic project and institution management programs that would be held annually to cope up the shortage. Besides of the basic programs, courses on specialized areas of agricultural research management such as planning, organizations, management information systems(MIS), evaluation, client-institute relations, personnel management, etc. are also needed.
It is clear that FAO and all other active agencies is currently strengthening agricultural research management skills inasmuch that they cannot train all of the world’s agricultural research managers. The only feasible option under the circumstance is to train the trainers, with the hope and expectation that it shall derive a multiplier effect in doing so.