Avanzar2030 workshop: Synthesizing evidence on sustainable agrifood systems in Latin America and the Caribbean

Food systems in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) can be made more sustainable, providing healthier diets and better livelihoods while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and environmental destruction. Across the region, many food systems actors have implemented a range of innovative solutions to pursue these goals—but it is not always clear which innovations have worked best and in what contexts.

To address that issue, experts from a dozen agricultural and environmental organizations gathered at the headquarters of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in San Jose, Costa Rica, on September 7 and 8 for the Avanzar2030 workshop. This project, led by IFPRI in partnership with IICA and the University of Notre Dame, seeks to identify policies, technologies, and institutions with the greatest potential to bring about sustainable innovations in Latin American and Caribbean food systems. The team will pursue this goal by synthesizing the wealth of existing research and policy guidance into actionable knowledge. The workshop brought the research teams together to establish a common understanding of literature synthesis, identify the key concepts underpinning food and agricultural system transformation, and begin to establish a research strategy that will provide insight into these concepts.