n biodiversity. There is strong pressure by organized social groups to protect the environment, but resources available to implement effect protective measures are inadequate. Private enterprises, and mainly producers of export commodities, refuse to include environmental preservation costs in their production costs. In both the poorest countries in the region and in peasant production, where economic efficiency is low, environmental sustainability is generally font a concern or production systems, except in some traditional or indigenous cultures. Deforestation continues, as does the intensive use of fertilizers and herbicides and the expansion of arable land, as a result of incentives to produce biofuels.

3.4.3.2 2016-2030

3.4.3.2.1 Context of AKST systems and agricultural
production
After a long period of negotiations in the World Trade Organization, developed countries begin to reduce trade barriers previously used as a defense mechanism against the competition of agricultural products. Agricultural commodityproducing countries have to neutralize environmental barriers imposed out of fear of harmful environmental and climatic effects resulting from the expansion of land planted to grain crops and energy products.
     The LAC countries already established on commodity markets, i.e., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, among others, manage to gain access to the most dynamic markets (United States, China, India), and, on a smaller scale, to the market for differentiated products. The economic results obtained allow these countries to increase their capacity to invest in technological innovation for agricultural production systems and thus to compete on some differentiated agricultural product markets. These countries continue to export commodities in addition to a portfolio of bioenergy products such as alcohol and biodiesel.
     Consumers in wealthier countries both within and outside the region gradually demand safer and higher quality food and nonfood products that are also have functional properties and are produced according to environmentally friendly production methods, and they are willing to pay the cost associated with this demand. Internal LAC markets are composed mostly of low-income consumers, who want lowpriced food, and of a middle class capable of demanding differentiated and healthy products at higher prices. Niches for high-income consumers with differentiated demands increase.
     In most of the region, an increase in the frequency or severity of pests and diseases, seen in the previous period and aggravated by rising temperatures, leads to improvements in the development and use of best practices for management of production systems, and to improvements in the national governmental structure for preventing and mitigating the impact of new pests or diseases, or even epidemics, both on a domestic level and through regional cooperation.
     Major changes in the pattern of land use—for example, large tracts of land planted to a single oleaginous crop or sugarcane for production of biofuels—lead to the appearance of new pests and diseases, which in turn result in the creation of public policies and research plans to mitigate

the effects of these pests and diseases. Similarly, government have planned adaptation policies in regions already highly affected by early manifestations of climate change, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and the like, and these policies create an environment that is conducive to the proliferation of epidemics. Thus progress is made in dealing with
the coexistence of agricultural production and epidemics in the region.
     The temperature rises at the rate of 0.22°C-0.24°C every ten years and the frequency of extreme events increases. This has important but disparate effects on agriculture and production systems in the region, mainly due to the equally disparate capacity of countries to adapt to or mitigate these effects. At the same time, many countries expand their capacity to live with these phenomena.
     The countries of the region that have a more developed research structure apply the results obtained from public policies designed to mitigate the impact of climate change, to guide agricultural development. Financial and management limitations still affect the ability to obtain results that can be used for adaptation to or mitigation of the climate problem, mainly in the poorest countries in the region.
     Many LAC countries adopt measures of technological innovation, social development, environmental protection, and biosecurity, but in some countries political and budget restrictions cause the results to fall short of expectations.
Democratic changes in government usually lead to management changes in public institutions, which in turn disrupt the continuity needed to obtain valid results. As a result of the creation of an environmental conscience, the countries of the region implement more coherent biosecurity and environmental protection policies based on both domestic protocols
and protocols imported from rich countries, which subsidize all of part of the relevant implementation costs.
     The transition to establishing regulations and quality standards for food or agricultural products and their
enforcement, initiated in the previous period, continues. Governments, working in partnership with transnationals producing agricultural inputs and major stakeholders in the wholesale and retail trades, are responsible for management of health and biosecurity standards. Governments take on
the task of supervising and assisting family-based agricultural units, with encouraging results.
     Strong social pressure to improve the structure of education in the region has a positive impact on the quality of
public education, especially in the poorest countries, which obtain good results. Private education improves as well.
     While developed countries far from the region make major investments in basic science to develop new technologies, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and information science, the LAC countries also boost both investment in basic science and transfers of know-how from developed countries. Consequently, in some countries of the region and in certain fields of research, there is pioneering scientific development, that enables them to acquire the capacity to
make important progress in production technologies for agricultural systems, agriculture, and product differentiation, and in improving their competitiveness.  
    In LAC, NGOs that defend environmental sustainability
and social inclusion, large private companies, and public R&D institutions recognize to varying degrees the value of