In July 1996, with assistance from FAO, USAID, and the USDA Forest Service, CIFOR offered its first International Research Training Seminar on Reduced-Impact Timber Harvesting and Natural Forest Management. Participants were drawn from ten countries and represented disciplines ranging from silviculture and hydrology to wildlife biology. Throughout the workshop, field exercises were integrated with classroom activities, initially in the experimental forest plantation near CIFOR's headquarters, and later at an industrial timber concession in East Kalimantan.

The project validated and disseminated a large number of improved rice-based cropping systems technologies suited to upland agro-ecologies. These improved technologies have good potentials to raise the productivity of water, land, and labor. The innovative strategies employed by the project including the paradigm of landscape management, multi-institutional partnership, multidisciplinary teamwork, farmer participatory approach to technology validation, and community-based seed production led to successful generation and dissemination of technologies.