Dr. Tiwari,

Greetings from Brazil. First of all, i believe we must take in account the cathegory ‘think tank’ governance. What is a think tank, but an elitist conception of policy building? Of course we must enquire about the differences between think tanks, such as its origins, objectives, its composition and selection processes, its funding. Think tanks are usually a proxy of one or more social groups – usually dominant strata, who can afford – to put forward its ideas and dispute societal hegemony.

So why would it be the basis for ascertaining any national policy, whether it be agricultural or financial ones? It seems this is way to conceal the true gap: popular sovereignty. The nation should account for its core principle, the people. Any policy, especially the agricultural ones, that rely on the specificities of the territories, of local forms of organization and labor hardships, cannot be thought of by enlightened beings under penalty of attending shady interests, such as market preferences, commodification etc. What happened to political instruments such as referendums and plebiscites, community councils and so on? Once the popular demands are reckognized through such instruments, only then could the só called think tanks contribute by providing regional and global market perspectives and trends and how the local production may or not engage in larger scale trading. It could also contribute by providing a greater panorama of the world’s state of art in different agricultural techniques and management as well as an analytical overview of the pros and cons for their adoption in local and regional cases, which in any case should be decided by the local peoples.

I would also note that those functions performed by think tanks also tend to represent a gap that should be filled by governmental mechanisms and personnel, open to the public and transparent on how and why such orientations were defined and what its short, medium and large term goals are. Again, think tanks are often not clear about these subjects and tend to reproduce a top-down method of social planning under a liberal logic/paradigm that exorcises the State by principle and seeks to produce gaps only to fill them with so called civil society representations usually funded by private interests.

I’m open for debate and hope I’ve helped in some way

A ‘think tank’ governance model can help identify priority research areas by pooling expertise from multiple disciplines, evaluating emerging trends, and ensuring alignment with state and national agricultural policies, ultimately guiding resources toward high-impact, farmer-oriented innovations.