San Jose, 23 May 2022 (IICA). The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) have signed an agreement designed to strengthen and broaden the support they provide to their Member States in the areas of sustainable development in the crop, livestock, and forestry sectors.
The agreement, signed by the Director General of IICA, Manuel Otero, and the Director General of CATIE, Muhammad Ibrahim, will run for ten years and focus on cooperation in the technical/scientific and corporate spheres.
The partnership will involve collaborative work linked to the Sustainable Development Goals: no poverty, zero hunger, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, responsible consumption and production, climate action, and life on land.
Initially, the joint efforts will focus on actions aimed at strengthening production innovation processes, sustainable agribusiness enterprises, research and technology transfer in tropical agriculture, and sustainable agri-food systems.
They will also target work on biodiversity conservation, watershed management, integrated water and soil resource management; and synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture; and in areas such as coffee, cocoa and other tropical crops, sustainable livestock production, and agroforestry and silvopastoral systems.
In addition, the agreement calls for actions designed to contribute to the development of sectoral policies, public-private institutional frameworks, projects and activities for the sustainable management of rural territories, as well as the improvement of agroforestry systems and food and nutrition security, with the emphasis on small- and medium-scale producers and family farmers.
Another focus of attention under this new instrument is skills development for the public sector, agricultural producers and their families, and private sector organizations, to help improve the competitiveness and sustainability of crop farming, livestock production, and forestry, the management of rural territories, climate change adaptation, and food and nutrition security.
The agreement will prioritize other initiatives that include knowledge management based on CATIE’s higher education programs, and joint training and technology transfer activities of various kinds for technical staff and producers.
All the above will be underpinned with network development and management, communication and learning platforms, horizontal cooperation between countries and, in particular, South-South cooperation.
The joint IICA-CATIE unit set up by the two organizations will coordinate the actions called for under the agreement at the operational, technical, and executive levels.
