and a growing exchange of knowledge10 among the region’s national institutes, and between these and various regional and international institutions.

          Some regional organizations are of long standing and in some countries even predate the creation of the national institutes (NARIs). One example is Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences, currently known as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), an institution created in 1942 in Turrialba, Costa Rica, where an experimental station and postgraduate education center was established that subsequently led to the creation of Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in 1973. In that year, the research and training activities were separated from more comprehensive efforts of hemispheric scope undertaken by IICA, which established its headquarters in the canton of Coronado, also in Costa Rica but in the outskirts of the country’s capital.

Also In the mid-1970s, the twelve members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a trade and integration initiative, created Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) with the aim of strengthening agricultural research and development activities and supporting the agricultural sectors of member countries. These functions had previously been carried out by a regional Research Center, created in 1955 by the English-speaking Caribbean countries to meet the growing and increasingly complex challenges of agriculture.

In addition to the sub-regional centers mentioned above, in the 1970s and 1980s the NARIs and other public and private institutions of LAC countries gradually established cooperative agricultural research programs (known as PROCIs), which have grown notably and continue to
function today. These programs evolved, from initial exchanges of knowledge among participating institutions, to the execution of joint research activities and the implementation of regional research projects and informal training efforts. Nowadays there are various cooperative programs for several topics and for all the sub-regions of the Americas.11

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¹⁰ Known generally as “spillover”
¹¹ The Cooperative Research and Technology Transfer Program for the Northern Region, involving Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. (PROCINORTE); the Caribbean Agricultural Science and Technology Networking System for the CARDI countries plus Suriname (PROCICARIBE); the Central American Cooperative Program for the Improvement of Crops and Animals (PCCMCA); the regional Cooperative Program for the Technological Development and Modernization of Coffee
Cultivation in Central America and the Dominican Republic (PROMECAFE); the Central American Agricultural Technology Integration System, involving the Central American countries and Panama (SICTA); the Cooperative Research and Technology Transfer Program for the Andean Subregion, which includes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela (PROCIANDINO); the Cooperative Research and Technology Transfer Program for the South American Tropics, covering Brazil and the countries of the Amazon Basin— Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela (PROCITROPICOS); and the Cooperative Program for the Development of Agricultural Technology in the Southern

The majority of these initiatives received support from IICA and the IDB during their initial stages. Such cooperative mechanisms, which do not require new institutional structures, have had a positive impact in promoting technological development in the countries involved, as shown by various impact assessments.

There are also consortia and specialized networks for different topics, products, and sub-regions that have received support from FAO’s national and regional offices and other international institutions. Some of the most important include the regional Cooperative Potato Program; the regional Cooperative Program on Beans for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean; the regional Maize Program, coordinated by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT); the Latin American Agricultural Conservation Network; the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion; the International Network of Farming Systems Research Methodology; the Technical Cooperation Network on Plant Biotechnology; and various cooperative research programs funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered by US universities.

          LAC’s institutional AKST system also has two other types of components, implemented in the 1990s in an effort to complete the region’s institutional architecture and fill some of the gaps observed in its functioning: FONTAGRO and FORAGRO.

          The Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO) is a consortium created to promote strategic agricultural research of regional scope with direct participation by LAC countries in setting priorities and funding research projects. It was established by a group of countries of the region12 with sponsorship from IDB, IICA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC). Its purpose its to improve the competitiveness of the agricultural sector, ensure the sustainable management of natural resources, and work to reduce poverty through the development of technologies that qualify as international public goods. It should do this by facilitating the exchange of scientific knowledge within the region and with other regions of the world.

          The goal is to establish an endowment fund of 200 million dollars and use the annual dividends to provide sustained non-reimbursable financing for regional strategic research projects. Project funding is allocated through a competitive mechanism based on projects’ coherence with the Fund’s objectives and on technical, economic, environmental and institutional criteria established for the priority research areas defined in the Medium Term 2005-2010 Plan. The design and execution of the proposals is undertaken by different organizations in the Fund’s member countries (research institutes, universities, foundations, private groups),
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Cone, which includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay (PROCISUR).
¹² In 2000, its members included Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Venezuela and the International Development Research Center (IDRC). www.fontagro. org.