Some 1,000 World Food Prize Laureates, ministers, farmers, community development organizations, leading scientists, and innovators will gather in Montpellier, France from 28-31 March 2010 for the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD).

The G8 called for this meeting to identity research priorities and required actions to improve agriculture and  outline research priorities. GCARD will seek to strengthen and harness the use of agricultural research to meet the global food requirements for a growing population in an environmentally sustainable process.

"This meeting marks the beginning of a global transformation in agriculture," said World Food Prize Laureate Dr. Monty Jones, who is leading the team organizing the meeting. "Agriculture has to be able to change at a speed and scale never before contemplated, and many of these reform processes are already underway. Our discussions and the new forms of research that arise from them will enable us to better pinpoint how to deploy limited agriculture dollars to meet a range of development needs—whether it's to develop new drought-resilient maize varieties in East Africa, new partnerships that link women farmers to markets to sell their harvests, or making much better use of water in regions where water scarcity is a serious threat."

Additional information about the meeting can be obtained from http://www.egfar.org/egfar/website/gcard.