The international Cassava Biotechnology Network (CBN) was founded as a voluntary research network in a workshop at CIAT in 1988. The network, which has members in 35 countries, works to develop projects that link small-scale farmers to upstream research through various types of farmer participation in research priority setting, research activities, and decision making. Cassava fanners' concerns, as expressed to CBN, reflect the different roles of cassava in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Africa, where it is primarily a food security crop, fanners are concerned mainly about production problems and reliability. CBN members work with modern plant biotechnologies including micro-propagation, molecular genetics and genetic transformation, as well as with traditional and modem fermentation biotechnologies. CBN's orientation toward integrating fanners in its work has been an evolutionary process. The networks' early activities in priority setting with fanners were what has been called the consultative mode of farmer participation.