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In response to the 2007-08 food crisis, and as part of its commitment to the  ¨C the commitment of global leaders to improve world food security - the Government of the Russian Federation established the  (ECFS) in March 2012. Hosted by , the Center offers education programs as well as policy and technical recommendations for improving agricultural performance, sustainable rural development, and natural resources management.

At the request of the Government, the World Bank has been providing technical assistance to ECFS - through its Reimbursable Advisory Services ¨C to help enhance the Center¡¯s institutional capacity, and develop its food and nutrition security research agenda focused on the Eurasian region. It supports ECFS¡¯s ambition to evolve into an internationally recognized center of excellence for research and education - one that delivers modern analytical, research and educational products to a broad range of partners and clients.

ECFS collaborates with a number of Russia-based, regional and global partners on the research, who all believe that strengthening research and analytical capacity is an important public good and can help countries in the region access a global knowledge base to improve their capacity for food policy implementation.

Research partners include the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the International Center for Agriculture Research in Dryland Areas (ICARDA), and other member institutions of the CGIAR system - all mobilized with support from the World Bank. The many beneficiaries include the Government of the Russian Federation (the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Finance), Governments of the focus countries (Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), and the food policy and agriculture development community in the Eurasian region and globally.

To date, the Center has successfully initiated and implemented a wide range of programs and activities, including:

• annually published research and anlytical studies focused on food and nutrition security topics, including scaling-up an already successful case study program,
• annual or bi-annual flagship publications on ¡°Food Policy and Nutrition Development Report in Eurasia¡±, which provide critical analyses of major food and nutrition security challenges and topics,
• an International Conference on Eurasian Food Security to establish a network of food policy practitioners and to facilitate knowledge exchange and learning,
• training for food policy practitioners through masters level educational programs.