knowledge in the vast majority of cases. The enhanced value of environmental services gradually changes this picture.

3.4.5.1.2 AKST systems
The concern over the environment and environmental sustainability in agriculture grows throughout the period, as a result of increased temperatures and more frequent extreme climate events in the region. Consequently, R&D in LAC gives high priority to knowledge about the environment and its relationship with agriculture. This concern materializes in a heavy investment of resources for research on this. Various R&D programs initiated also specifically focus on adaptation to or reduction of the impact and mitigation or reduction of the causes of climate change. By midperiod, investment in research designed to measure and assesses the value of environmental services and biodiversity also increases.
     R&D priorities include development of processes for: (1) control of residues and nutrients added to soils of productive systems; (2) treatment and recycling of agricultural and agroindustrial waste; (3) precise evaluation of the need for inputs, water, etc. for plant growth (precision agriculture); (4) safety and quality guarantees in food processing; and (5) creation of varieties and strains adapted to hostile environmental conditions. All of these processes are complementary and designed to increase productivity. The following topics linked to the environment and ecosystems are priorities: (1) the economic valuation of biodiversity and natural resources; (2) sustainable economic exploitation of biodiversity; (3) management of fishing resources; (4) management of the quality and use of water; and (5) management of forest resources.
     In terms of the social groups targeted by R&D, by the end of this period an important change occurs: R&D is no longer directed preferentially to large and medium-sized traditional producers, but instead it is geared to end consumers, agroindustry, and policymakers on a priority basis, and only secondarily to merchants and subsistence farmers (Castro et al., 2005; Lima et al., 2005). Indigenous communities and small-scale producers are not important to R&D organizations at the outset of the period, but this situation changes over time due to the growing interaction between research institutions and these communities.
     A growing awareness of the importance of science and R&D also means that LAC scientists receive greater financial and token compensation for their work. They work in close cooperation, forming multi-institutional research networks with scientists in many LAC countries and in countries outside the region as well. In this way, advances in knowledge within LAC and the incorporation of knowledge generated in other regions of the world are facilitated.
     Throughout virtually the entire period, traditional knowledge is not given serious consideration as a source of technologies for formal systems in LAC. In 2013, with the impact of climate change in LAC, many countries begin to debate the advisability of using traditional knowledge to define practices to adapt to extreme weather phenomena. Little by little traditional communities begin to be seen as sources of knowledge on the different biomes and the environmental services provided by them. This realization is
confined to a few countries.

     Thanks to sustained economic growth, during this period most LAC countries have financial resources for longterm investment, for instance in R&D. They also have a critical mass of internationally reputed scientists in specific fields. The R&D project management and implementation process is increasingly professionalized. It is based on detailed studies of the future and on long-term planning. This process also increasingly includes other stakeholders interested in the results of R&D activities.
     Research and development activities form an arena where public and private R&D organizations compete and cooperate. These two sectors have the financial and human resources needed to perform well. They establish a division of labor according to which some of the more profitable commodities, such as corn, tobacco, melons, papaya, wood species, and cotton, in addition to most of the products with a high value added, are the purview of the private sector, while species such as rice, beans, coffee, citrus fruits, wine, yucca, mango, bananas, and cashews are of strategic importance to the public sector. The two sectors cooperate in some areas of research, such as soybeans (Castro el al., 2006).
     Research in LAC produces important results for agriculture. In food chains, there are advances in certification, traceability, and food safety in general. There are also important developments that have to do with biofuels. The successful experience of Brazil with alcohol as a replacement
for gasoline is used as an example for the development of other plant-based energy sources, such as oil from oil palm, which is used as a substitute for diesel in Brazil and other LAC countries. As a result of heavy investment in the environment, by around 2015 difficult issues having to do with the economic valuation of biodiversity and natural resources in the provision of environmental services and for sustainable agricultural production begin to be resolved. Important efforts are also made in the area of management of forest resources and the quality and use of water, which
becomes a source of concern on the heels of climate change effects observed in the course of the period. The technologies generated by public and private R&D and by broad social participation in the research process are usually adapted to the systems served by them. These technologies also come close to an ideal of what the most appropriate technologies for sustainable development would be. This is true even in the case of more vulnerable social groups that were not given priority at the beginning of the period.

3.4.5.1.3 Agricultural production systems
The situation created by extemporaneous changes in the climate encourages the intensive incorporation of relevant knowledge into agricultural production systems. The countries of the region approach the incorporation of knowledge and nature itself with widely varying degrees of intensity.
     In this scenario, the incorporation of knowledge into agriculture is a business matter, and producing enterprises do it by training their workers in the use of new techniques and inputs to improve the productivity and sustainability of the systems. The enterprises also require the implementation and verification of a series of practices to comply with market requirements. Similarly, the stakeholders of smaller production systems are organized in associations, so that