CARIBBEAN-New publication examines the state of agriculture and rural development in LAC.

SANTIAGO, Chile, CMC – The Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim, said on Tuesday that there is a need to address non-tariff barriers that affect trade in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Addressing the launch of a report that provides a regional overview of productivity, sustainability, inclusion, innovation, financing, and public policies, the Guyanese-born IICA Director General said he wanted to add international trade as an engine for agricultural productivity.

“But here I would like to highlight not only international trade in terms of how do we move from the north to the south, but also more promotion of inter-regional trade,” Ibrahim said, adding that’s “an issue we need to address in terms of looking at the barriers, the non-tariff barriers that affect trade”.

He said, as an example, in the Caribbean, where the regional countries have an interest in reducing the food importation bill through the “the 25 by 30 initiative,” by promoting more inter-regional trade, there is a need to “understand what the regional barriers that we need to overcome to enhance this are”. Watch video

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) initiative, which targeted reducing the region’s more than six billion US dollar food import bill by 25 percent by 2025, has now been extended to 2030.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) and IICA shared their expertise in preparing the report titled “Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas 2025–2026: A Look at Latin America and the Caribbean”.

The report argues that Latin America and the Caribbean face a challenging context and proposes increasing agricultural productivity as a strategic pillar to strengthen agrifood systems and rural territories.

The 2025–2026 edition identifies persistent rural gaps, productivity lags, limitations in financing and R&D investment, and growing exposure to extreme climate events. It proposes an action agenda to increase agricultural productivity and strengthen food security, resilience, and regional cooperation.

In his address at the launch, Ibrahim thanked all the partners and authors for their contributions to this book, adding that IICCA is looking forward to promoting communication and expanding the outreach of the information generated to different stakeholders.

He said that the FAO, in its outlook for agriculture, noted that global food demand must increase by 70 percent by 2050.

“… this book is providing the strategic actions to drive agriculture productivity to reach these global demands. It provides a concrete roadmap for transforming agriculture productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Ibrahim said that between 2011 and 2020, regional agricultural total productivity increased by about 5 percent, with the increase in production related to the use of more inputs and resources, estimated at 80 percent. “Therefore, the next growth cycle in the next decades is foreseen, where we need to increase total agriculture productivity to respond to the growing demands of food and to look at the nutritional demands from the growing population.”

He said that this chapter on strategic actions to drive agricultural productivity highlights some of the key steps needed to boost total growth.

“One is looking at enabling policies. We still think that the developing countries need to invest more in research and development, which is only about 1.6 percent in some of the countries…”

“So, we need stronger scientific capacities. We need to improve the laboratories, but also to look at the regulatory frameworks that will enable these policies, including agriculture, health, and biosecurity.”

Ibrahim said that countries in Central America currently face key problems, including screwworm.

“We know there are challenges with TR4; there are many problems with diseases, bird flu, and all these major challenges, which we need better science and information to advance on these challenges that we have to boost productivity.

“Another area we need to work on is funding for sustained agriculture productivity,” he said, highlighting the importance of the CAF in seeking to unlock financing for the agriculture sector.

“Financing must be understood as an ecosystem, not simply as a credit or innovative financial schemes. We need to de-risk finance and also explore differentiated incentives and financial mechanisms that target small and family farmers, who need support to overcome barriers to adopting the improved technologies and innovations we are developing. ”

Ibrahim said there is a need for a more robust financing scheme to remove these barriers to the adoption and scaling up of good practices, adding that the report also discusses technical assistance and rural extension schemes.

“We think that the model of extension schemes needs to be redirected. Now that there are digital tools, we need to look at the cascading model, move from impacts to broader transfer beyond technology, and understand the whole ecosystem.

“All innovation and knowledge is flowing, and we are also integrating the youth and women in the territories working towards the scaling up of good technologies. This is an area where IICA has been working to promote new leaders in the region, a new generation of external services to be combined with personal and digital models, connect with territorial innovation systems, and incorporate sustainability, climate adaptation, and risk management.

Ibrahim said there is also a need to examine the technology used to boost productivity, noting that it is a catalyst for a new way of producing.

“Digitalization, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, gene editing, all these tools, modern tools now have been used for improving productivity on the corn, on all of our soybean and all of these crops that we have.

“But understanding that the Americas have a rich agro-biodiversity, we should capitalize on these genetic resources also for boosting yields, but also adaptation, pest resistance, looking at nutritional needs and looking at more bio-fortified crops to look at the nutritional demands that we have based on the knowledge, precision and innovation that we have in these areas. “We also need to look at efficiency, efficient and intelligent use of inputs and resources,” the Guyanese-born official said, adding “so, there are sectors called to look at reducing its footprint, the ecological footprint, but also looking at resource efficiencies”.

Download video – Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim, Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)