Agriculture is rapidly intensifying in Latin America. Regional drivers include global and local trends such as market liberalization and increasing urbanization. Intensification of local production systems often results in short-term production increases at the cost of a deterioration of the natural resource base. The resulting continuous spiral of unsustainability can not be broken by incremental modifications of existing farming systems, but often requires re-designing of the overall farming system. Science can play a critical role during this process provided that rural stakeholders are directly engaged during a collective learning process.
EULACIAS focuses on three case study areas in Latin America where farmers and researchers are involved in regional and on-farm innovation processes. The project adopts a systems approach and by monitoring and evaluating development impacts in close collaboration with local stakeholder aims to facilitate more efficient use of research knowledge. This entire process is referred to as “co-innovation”.
This project consortium joins three European universities with three Latin American partners and CIAT. As a whole, the team draws on considerable knowledge from previous experiences in agronomy, economics and social sciences.
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