Amiri Kassam

Amiri Kassam

"Amiri Kassam is Visiting Professor in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading, UK, and former interim Executive Secretary of the CGIAR Science Council. In 2005, he was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen’s Honours List for services to tropical agriculture and to rural development. He currently consults for FAO-AGP on aspects of sustainable agricultural development including: conservation agriculture, plant breeding and agrobiodiversity, land suitability assessments for biofuel crops, and impact of land use on ecosystem services. He was involved with Elcio Guimaraes in launching [the Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB)] in 2006 and formulating the "GIPB's Next Steps" concept document and mobilising project funding for the initial three-year "Start-Up" phase. In 2007 and 2008, he facilitated with Mauricio Lopes the implementation of GIPB including its Task Force 1 process dealing with the formulation of GIPB's longer-term strategy and the Task Force 2 process dealing with GIPB's medium-term operational plan. He contributed to these multi-stakeholder Task Force processes through process planning, preparing discussion papers for electronic and face-to-face consultations, and formulating the GIPB business plan 2009-2013. In 2009, he was involved finalising GIPB's Logo, in evaluating proposals for GIPB's competitive research grant scheme, and in redesigning the GIPB's Country Briefs on plant breeding and related biotechnology capacity assessments."

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Related SourceWatch Articles

• Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building
• U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
• FAO Plant Production and Protection Division