Food Security Leader Calls for Women's Voices in Convenings

As a freshman in high school in Marrakesh, Morocco, Ismahane Elouafi determined to become one of her country’s first female fighter pilots.

Persuading her parents was only Challenge No. 1. Once enrolled in a special aeronautics school, she faced an extra four hours of daily tutoring in physics and mathematics plus athletic training after her regular classes.

Her commitment, tested, didn’t waver. She persevered for three years.

As she and a handful of other female fighter-pilot hopefuls graduated from high school and prepared for aviator training, the military reversed its earlier decision. Women, it said, could not become fighter pilots. “I was 17 years old, and I found it unjust,” she said. “I still do.”

Not only was her dream dashed, but by this time, exams for admission to colleges such as engineering or architecture were over.

Only the agriculture program was still available, so that’s where Elouafi found herself.

Ismahane Elouafi (left) in 1986 while she was studying with the goal of becoming one of Morocco’s first female fighter pilots. (Photo Courtesy of Ismahane Elouafi)

And she excelled. She led the nonprofit International Center for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai.  She then became the Chief Scientist at the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and now Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agriculture research system which emerged from three convenings at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.

“I’m grateful that destiny took me this direction. When I wanted to be a fighter pilot, it was not the military side that interested me,” Elouafi said. “What I dreamed about was saving the most vulnerable people, people caught in wars. Now, through agriculture, I’m on that helping side, where I wanted to be.”

Partnerships Fuel CGIAR's Work

For the last five decades, CGIAR has been one of the world’s most successful research and development organizations contributing to food, nutrition, sustainability, and poverty reduction. It has also continuously evolved so that a group of autonomous centers and sovereign donors with diverse interests, each acting in a voluntary manner, could jointly meet changing priorities and science.

Among its accomplishments, CGIAR has developed and disseminated high-yield crop varieties that have boosted global agricultural productivity, improving the nutrition of 20 million people in low-income countries through crops fortified with essential micronutrients like vitamin A, iron, and zinc. Additionally, it has advanced climate-smart agricultural practices to help farmers adapt to changing climate conditions.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican Agriculture Program and the other programs developed on that model gave farmers in developing countries tools to modify agricultural techniques and maximize return.

CGIAR’s global network includes 15 top-tier research centers, with a local presence in 89 countries. It collaborates with over 3,000 partners, including national governments, academic institutions, global policymakers, private companies, and non-governmental organizations.

And it continues to establish collaborative networks to support agricultural research and innovation on a global scale. Elouafi believes these partnerships fuel the organization’s work.

“We share common global challenges, but borders and diverse cultures can separate us. Bringing together different perspectives is vital,” she said.

Not Only Gender Inclusion, But Gender Balance

She offers a caveat: The voices of women must be prioritized.

“In low- and medium-income countries, household nutrition is generally in women’s hands. So from the perspective of impact and efficiency, you must focus more on women and girls,” Elouafi said.

Gender inclusion wasn’t part of those early convenings, but they did break silos by including scientists, funders, policymakers, and others, noted Gary H. Toenniessen, The Rockefeller Foundation’s former Director of Food Security who worked for the Foundation for 42 years.

RF-supported education and training helped professionalize locals and created a new network of native-born experts, or “agronomistos.”

CGIAR also broke with convention by focusing on research to address the root causes of food insecurity while many others were concentrating on providing food aid, he said.

One participant, Lowell S. Hardin, described that first meeting in 1969 with 24 participants, noting that it came at a precarious moment for food security. “By the second day,” he wrote, “it was clear the conference was going well.”

CGIAR certainly would not have been formed without those convenings, Toenniessen said.

“Bellagio was the catalyst,” attendee Lowell S. Hardin noted in a 2008 essay. “It mobilized the world’s agricultural development organizations to set in motion plans for rapidly increasing food production. It took the right mix of open-minded aid officials and dedicated scientists to achieve this, and it succeeded beyond any of our imaginings.”

“To truly revolutionize our food systems in the face of climate change, collective action is essential,” said Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President, Food, The Rockefeller Foundation. “Well-designed convenings remain a potent catalyst for amplifying marginalized voices and collaboratively crafting a sustainable future that benefits both humanity and our planet.”

Collaboration is critical because it has never been more urgent that the globe comes together to fight climate change, Elouafi said.

“Climate change and food are inextricably linked. Some 780 million people globally are affected by hunger, a number that will grow significantly with every degree the world warms,” she wrote in a recent paper.

CGIAR’s Ismahane Elouafi in the Senegalese fields with the agriculture research institute INCRISAT. (Photo Courtesy of CGIAR)

“As little as a 0.1-degree difference in temperature could mean a plant doesn’t flower, and if the flower doesn’t happen, the plant might not produce fruit or grain,” she said in her interview with The Rockefeller Foundation.

To guarantee food security as well as global peace, more must be done to support farmers and reduce emissions, she said. But “there is no single country or sector that can meet the mega-challenge of climate change. We have to do this together.”