In September 2002, we bade farewell to Per Pinstrup-Andersen as IFPRI's director general. It was during Per's tenure, and based on his clear ideas about the steps needed to rid the world of hunger, that IFPRI launched the 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Initiative, which proved to be one of our most successful outreach ventures. Per received the 2001 World Food Prize for a distinguished career of impressive achievements, including 17 years at IFPRI as a research fellow, division director, and director general.

Our new director general, Joachim von Braun, is no stranger to IFPRI, having spent a decade as a research fellow and division director in the 1980s and early 1990s. Joachim led major research efforts on the impact of agricultural commercialization on nutrition and on mitigating and preventing famines, before returning to academe in his native Germany. There, he was director of the prestigious Center for Development Research at Bonn University. Joachim will complete his three-year term as president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists in 2003. We are fortunate to have him as IFPRI's chief executive.

Joachim has led IFPRI research and outreach divisions and partners in preparing a long-term strategy paper that will guide IFPRI's food policy research, capacity strengthening, and communications activities over the next decade. The Board discussed the paper and agreed to treat it as a living document, to be revisited every few years. The strategy seeks to keep IFPRI on the cutting edge to help build a world without hunger and malnutrition.

We also said goodbye in early 2003 to Geoff Miller, who served for six years on the Board and three years as Board Chair. Among Geoff's many accomplishments was his energetic and effective leadership of the search process for our director general in 2001. Geoff inspired all of us on the Board with his vision of good corporate governance. Geoff's is a difficult act to follow.

I assumed the position of Board Chair on April 1, 2003. I am happy to be the first woman to lead IFPRI's governing body. I am also happy to note the good work that IFPRI has done over the years on the important and multiple roles that women play in achieving food security, and the attempts that are being made to mainstream gender into all of our research and outreach activities.

At a time when globalization is raising concerns of different types in different quarters, it is appropriate that we take up in this report the critical question of how to maximize the gains from globalization, especially for the poorest people in the poorest countries, while minimizing the very real risks. An overview essay by Joachim von Braun and Kevin Watkins, the head of research at Oxfam Great Britain, looks at the need to create a more pro-poor global agricultural trading system. The second essay, which examines the ongoing Doha Round trade negotiations from the point of view of developing countries, is by Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla, IFPRI senior research fellow, and Ashok Gulati, the director of the new Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division. These two essays address key issues on IFPRI's research and outreach agenda in the years to come.