The Latin American and European Congress on Co-Innovation of Sustainable Rural Livelihood Systems will be held on April 27th to 30th, 2010 in Minas, Uruguay. This meeting is sponsored by the EULACIAS project, run by a consortium of European and Latin American institutions: Wageningen University (The Netherlands), Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy), University of South Bohemia (Czech Republic), Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (Colombia), Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (Mexico), Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Argentina) and Universidad de la República (Uruguay). This project aimed at reversing unsustainable use of natural and agro-resources and insufficient economic results of smallholder farming systems in Latin America by combining systems approaches, social learning by all actors, and dynamic monitoring. Available participatory methods for innovation were combined with a toolkit of quantitative ecosystem simulation models in an approach that brought together scientists and stakeholders. The goal of the congress is to stimulate exchange of experiences and promote networking between Latin American and European groups of scientists engaged in similar, action oriented, interdisciplinary projects on sustainable rural development at multiple levels.

Farmers in many rural and peri-urban environments in Latin America are caught in a vicious cycle of unsustainability. Decreasing prices of agricultural products and rising input prices cause major decline in family income. The typical response of farmers is to increase the intensity of production by increasing inputs and share of cash crops, and by taking up farming on marginal parts of their properties. This intensification requires substantial inputs of labor and capital and puts a heavy burden on soil and water resources: erosion of arable land, desertification of overgrazed pastures, dwindling soil organic matter levels, high levels of soil borne diseases, pollution of water by nutrients and pesticides. These ecological constraints have frequently led to disappointing yield levels, prompting farmers to further increase production intensity to the extent of endangering their livelihood, both ecologically and through debt. These misguided forms of agricultural intensification have consequences for land use and livelihoods beyond the farm scale. Erosion and soil mining affect natural resource quality in entire regions. Rural populations in search of scarce sources of off-farm income end up in cities causing major social imbalances. At the farm level, a major cause of these negative developments is that adaptation of farmers to changing conditions is mostly incremental, short-term oriented and only rarely involves strategic re-design of the rural livelihood as a whole. As a result, livelihoods become locked-in on unsustainable development tracks. At the regional/national level, institutional failure to provide to small-holder farmers access to information, market, credit and natural resources similar to extensive, large-scale agriculture enterprises has severely narrowed down the space for family agriculture to make a decent living.

The sustainability problems described above cannot be solved by isolated adjustments in some system components such as pest management or soil tillage but require whole farm re-design. Such a re-design of farm systems at the strategic level could be achieved by a participatory, interdisciplinary, systems approach. Involvement of the main stakeholders is particularly important since any intentional change in production systems is always a result of changes in human conduct and therefore requires an individual and collective learning process. Moreover, solutions to problems of this complexity do not come as 'take it or leave it' validated packages; they need to be designed within the context of application with direct involvement of farmers in all stages of the process, from diagnosis to dissemination.

The experiences in assessment of sustainability of current and innovative production systems and chains, and in engagement of researchers and stakeholders in collective learning processes are a central focus of the congress. The goals of the congress are to:

• Exchange experiences and compare approaches being used by different research groups.
• Confront knowledge from soft and hard systems approaches targeted at sustainable development of rural livelihoods.
• Identify strengths and weakness in current farming systems research tools and methods and assess future research needs.
• Identify opportunities of cooperation and provide an opportunity to build new relationships or strengthen existing ones among research groups in Latin America and Europe engaged in sustainable development of rural livelihoods.