The Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Muhammad Ibrahim, and the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil, Cleber Soares, discussed in a virtual meeting the preparations for the launch of the Regional Hub for Innovation and Sustainable Agriculture, which will be based in Georgetown, Guyana.
The hub, conceived as a center of excellence in innovation, technology transfer, and agricultural training, aims to increase the productivity and resilience of regional agrifood systems. The initiative is led by the host country, Brazil, the state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), and IICA.
Brazil, Embrapa, and IICA will be responsible for transferring technologies and knowledge developed in the South American country, with an emphasis on resilient production systems and innovation focused on family farming. The project is considered a milestone in technical cooperation between Brazil, IICA, the Caribbean, and Central America.
During the meeting, Ibrahim and Soares also addressed disruptions in the international fertilizer trade, which affect Latin America – the world's largest net food exporter but dependent on imports of chemical inputs –, the threats of the El Niño phenomenon to the agricultural sector, and the agenda for the next meeting of the IICA Executive Committee, scheduled for July.
The committee will bring together representatives of Antigua and Barbuda, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Saint Lucia. IICA is the specialized international organization for agriculture of the Inter-American System, with 34 Member States.