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Successive food, economic and environmental crises have prompted the world Agricultural Research for Development (ARD) bodies to spring into action. Faced with the clear failure of public development aid to reduce inequalities and hunger, especially in Africa, wide consensus has been achieved from the World Bank to the G8 via the UN, the European Union and the African Union these past five years on the need to improve agricultural production through sustainable rural development which shows respect for Man and Nature. The ARD has set itself the goal of supporting the implementation of technical, social and institutional responses to sustainable development through a partnership encouraging the pooling of knowledge, increased skills and the autonomy of key players.

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Acknowledgements
Foreword
Vulnerability and resilience of smallholder farms
Limiting the cultural risk
Powerlessness of international aid
Widening the agricultural issue
New partnerships for research and innovation
Research and sustainable development concepts
Developing stakeholder adaptability and empowerment
Multi stakeholder approaches in Africa and Brazil
Participatory practices in Africa
The UniCampo pilot project in Brazil
Case study analysis
Overview
Development models at the crossroads of all knowledge
Conclusion
References.

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Danièle Clavel is an agronomist with a doctorate in environmental sciences and techniques from the University of Paris 12. She specializes in adapting plants to drought and worked for fifteen years in Africa, notably in Senegal as a groundnut breeder. She is currently working at CIRAD in Montpellier, in relation with numerous rural development operators in French and English-speaking Africa.

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