 Good morning everybody. My name is Brian Perry. I am an independent consultant living down in the Rift Valley in Kenya and I have my pleasure to have my old friend Jimmy Smith and Jimmy Smith said to me over breakfast, can you not let me have a little bit of a look at your questions because we do go back a long way and indeed we do go back a long way and so first of all Jimmy congratulations on your appointment. Is it congratulations? When we had dinner in Rome some not that long ago you said you were very comfortable in the World Bank. You were definitely not looking for any change and you were not going to apply for this job. Why did you change your mind? Why did I change my mind? I foolishly thought that all that glittered was gold and that might not be the case. No, when they, I'm not sure why I changed my mind but probably most important factor was many colleagues called me up, many colleagues in the bank and outside the bank came to my office and said you know this is your chance to make something really happen, important happen for livestock. I became completely seduced by that and here I am. A bit worried about the ones inside the bank that wanted me to go. Is there anything behind that? No, no, no, not at all. My relationship to the bank are as solid as ever. Okay, very good. Now, but is this a real job or has the thunder, or has the thunder ability as an institute been stolen by the CRPs? No, it's a real job. The donors to the system have been trying for a long time to get the hold to be greater than the sum of the parts. They have tried many things. You may recall this is the eco-regional programs, the system-wide programs, the challenge programs. None of them seem to have done what was required to get the whole CGIR being larger than the sum of the parts. I think this is our last chance. Okay, so will you be a figurehead, a sort of partisan for livestock? Is that your role to try for the last chance? I listened to Carlos very carefully and couldn't characterize him after the end of his talk. I suppose you're going to be a mixture of all of those. Principally, we have to grow the pie. The livestock pie is too small. We can compete more aggressively to get a bigger share of a small pie. But that's not what we need. We need a big pie. And so it's both a bit of advocacy, both of trying to stimulate, motivate science to come up with a big and transformative thing so that we can show an impact. So let me say, I'm going to be facilitating the products along. Okay, now will you in fact really be reporting to Tom Randolph and D. E. Grace, who are running the big production? What's going to be the power structure in your work? Don't put ideas in people. You've always been mischievous. They've already got their ideas. They're trying to work out what their role is with you, I'm sure. I am very clear about what my role is with them. So there is no doubt in my mind. Okay, well, it's a good part. Okay, we won't pursue it. What's going to change? All who've been saying the last couple of days how wonderful Carlos is, and here we've got this great trajectory, is it business as usual? You've juggled a few positions at the exterior. Is that it? No, it can't be business as usual. The CG has changed in very fundamental ways. This is probably the biggest shift in the CG modus operandi ever. And it can't be business as usual. It's a new model. So we have to adapt to that model and stay tuned. Okay, with the exception of Ross Gray, the former, the last DG of Hillrad, the standard practice for incoming directors general is to do a round of discussions in the offices of a staff, listen to the troubles and aspirations, and then quickly back to the bunker of the DG's office for the rest of the tenure. I hear you've already done the rounds. Is it soon time to dig in? Well, no. Not at all. Not at all. But as I was doing the wrongs, I felt rather very much like a clinician without any medicine. But we have to get some and get some quickly. So it's not bunker time. Not at all. It is making all the staff an extension of the DG's office. Okay, did you all hear that? Now, I mean, but you're a very affable, approachable chap, Jimmy. But do you also have teeth? I've never seen them. Metaphorically, I think. Ask those, ask those who I've negotiated with. I pick my battles. I don't sweat the small stuff. But I can dig in. Don't worry. Okay, let's sort of pick up a point that I raised with Carlos yesterday. The livestock and poverty reduction conundrum. Philosophically, where do you sit on this? The survival of the smallholder or the broader processes of poverty reduction through livestock embracing various levels? Brian, when I heard you ask this question, it was clear to me that you've spent a lot of time listening to Paul Collier and what he had to say about this. We both have affiliation with Oxford, so actually, what do you expect? I think it's a mixture of both. But our role is how to make the smallholder benefit from the opportunities in food production. So yeah, I'm not saying it's going to be all smallholder driven, but our mandate is to have them participate in the change. And more recently, it's not only on the production side, so those who produce it. But how are we going to engage with poor consumes as well? As you might have heard it in the debate here. So yeah, a lot of the growth will be facilitated by large producers. But we must make smallholders benefit or we would have done our jobs. But of course, making smallholders benefit. But in order to get smallholders to benefit more, surely there is a need for greater integration with livestock enterprises at a larger, let's say, at a national level to look at all these interfaces between the fast movers, the medium movers, and the slow movers. Is that not correct? That's all correct, and that's why Tom Randolph doesn't sleep at nights. He's figuring out how to do all this. Okay, now don't try and divert the, that's just not fair. Is that all, you've devolved? No, straight away. Responsibility. Brian, part of the DG's job is to delegate. You keep those jobs which no one else want to do. Okay, in your inaugural, you did an inaugural presentation which I looked at on the web. You talked about climate smart systems. I know you'll need a few eye-catching slogans, but what are the practical deliverables on this? And inaugural, I don't remember doing such a thing. Well, maybe it was on the website under Jimmy Smith, and it's a little presentation that I went through. Maybe it was when you were being recruited. Anyway, you did talk about, ah, so you've forgotten about climate smart systems. No, no, no, I haven't forgotten about it. Climate smart agricultural systems mean that we will try to reduce the footprint of livestock so that as we expand production and productivity, cutting the footprint, reducing the footprint is an important part, but also dealing with resilience. How would livestock systems adapt to changing climate even as we do so? So it's a slogan, a bit of a slogan. We all need that from time to time, but there's a great deal of substance behind it. But given that the area is promising now deliverables and impact, what are the practical deliverables of this? Mario. But the practical deliverables about this straight away is that we must, one of the things we say we must do to reduce poverty is to increase smallholders productivity. By increasing smallholders productivity at the same cow, which gives two liter of milk today, gives 20 liters tomorrow, then we would have cut the emissions intensity per unit of animal significantly. That's a real gain. Okay, that's the sort of principle. You also talked in this about revitalizing with your word training as a research approach, but surely the engagement of master's PhD in post-oxidial research has been long standing. So what are you getting at with the revitalizing? Long standing, but at diminishing rates. I think Carlos said yesterday that that's one part of the CG where our partners gain the most, at least in their eyes, that's the place where the CG has been making the most important contribution and over the years this has declined significantly. Revitalizing means that we should fill up all these dormitories and so on with the constant stream of PhD and post-graduate people who are the youngest with us, or at most energetic, more current. I'm a historian. I did science a long time ago. I'm the best scientific historian. Those are the innovators. So we've got to get them back in the system and a lot more of them. You've written on the importance of agribusiness and you were probing Carlos yesterday on the role of the private sector. Are you planning a new approach for literally in public private partnerships? I don't know about a new approach, but a key part in my mind is how are we going to get our research products into development. That has been the Achilles heel of the CGI. We do good work and we're recognized for doing that good work, but when we go around looking at what is our real impact, it's not evident on the ground. Of course there's a dispute about where should we be having impact. Is it downstream or upstream? Wherever it is, we've got to be sure that the products we produce get into use somehow and the private sector is possibly one means of doing that. Coming from a development bank, I've been always concerned that more of the CG products did not get funded in development projects by the bank. We invest, not we anymore, the bank, the World Bank invests about four and a half billion dollars every year in agriculture development in the world, about half a billion here in Africa. We don't put a lot of that money into CGIR products. At least not specifically the hard to design. How can we make that happen and these are some of the things that I've been thinking about. Excellent. That's very exciting. On Hank's accession, Ilry had some engagement in Latin America in the out of Africa phase. Then there was a very successful program in Central America, which Ilry decided it was too stretched to work in Latin America. I hear you may be reconsidering that. There was no divorce from these parts of the world, as best I could tell. This was a resource constraint at the time when Ilry was created. Resources into the CGIR were declining and very scarce to come by so that getting out of Africa and into other parts was essentially a resource constraint, not a benign neglect of those areas. So yes, I would like to get back to wherever there are significant portions of poor people and they are in the Andes of Latin America and Central America, but it is going to be a matter of resource mobilization. I've been reminded of this many times. Our old board member Sharon, some of you will remember him. I don't know if anybody in this room remember Sharon, apart from me and you, Brian, we did. Sharon wrote me recently inviting me to a conference next year in Thailand, and he said, Jimmy, Ilry coming back to Asia in small canoes or big ships. My last question, you've just raised this issue of funding. On the new things that you're going to do, how are you going to address this never-ending problem of funding for Ilry? You know, I've been a researcher in the CG and all the places. I have been a bilateral donor. I've been a multilateral donor. My experience in donor agencies, both at the bank and at CEDA, has been that I've never come across a really good idea that I couldn't fund or get one of my colleagues to fund. So I am of this belief, perhaps naively, but it's been my experience, that good transformative ideas get funded. And if our scientists were able to come up with those ideas, we will find the money. Very good. Very confident. Jimmy, the best of luck, and thank you very much indeed. All right.