IICA and Syngenta seek solutions to agricultural challenges in science

The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and Syngenta, which work together to guarantee food production and promote better living conditions in rural territories, are looking for new spaces for collaboration to expand the impact of their actions in the hemisphere.

After two years of fruitful and close collaboration in favor of agricultural well-being, the relationship between IICA and Syngenta has achieved important achievements in the transfer of knowledge in terms of seeds, pest and disease control, training in technical standards and transformation of agrifood systems, mainly in Central America, and are now seeking to bring these and other benefits to other regions of the hemisphere.

“This partnership should be fundamental, bringing together a portfolio of projects on living soils, digital agriculture and cooperativism, among others, in which I am sure there is commonality of ideas with Syngenta. At IICA, we seek partnerships with impacts that translate into improving the quality of life of our farmers”, said Manuel Otero, General Director of the international organization.

“IICA is an institution that promotes coordinated action. Cooperation in these new times is absolutely necessary to lay the foundations of new agriculture,” he added.

“There is great potential in using this collaboration we have with IICA to capture all the knowledge that is being and will be generated to introduce it into the projects we have in partnership with our partners” expressed, in turn, Roberto Vega, Manager Syngenta Global Value Chain.

Living Soils

As part of the effort undertaken by IICA and Syngenta to promote more sustainable agriculture, the company joined the “Living Soils of the Americas” initiative, jointly implemented by the Institute and the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center (C-MASC) of the Ohio State University, run by world food prize Doctor Rattan Lal. In the private sector, companies such as Bayer and PepsiCo also support the initiative.

“Living Soils of the Americas” is a program that seeks to be a bridge between science and public policies for the work of restoring and protecting soils in the Americas, whose degradation threatens the position of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as a guarantor of global food security.

The initiative was designed to improve rural well-being, productivity and food security, respecting the limits of the environment and making rational use of natural resources.

“The answers are not just in governments, research centers or the private sector, the answers lie in everyone working together. One of the areas we have been working on is living soils and we are working with Syngenta on this because we know they have science-based solutions to offer our producers and ministers of agriculture”, expressed Lloyd Day, Deputy Director General of IICA.

The partnership maintains constant work in exploring new areas of opportunities to promote and deepen actions in search of sustainable agriculture in the Americas that directly benefits farmers, society as a whole and nature, today and in the future.