Deadline: 9-Apr-21
FONTAGRO announces the 2021 Call for the presentation of projects “Innovation for sustainable and resilient agri-food and territorial development in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
The objective of the call is to identify project proposals that provide concrete evidence of “how to promote sustainable and resilient agri-food and territorial development through the addition of value in the LAC region.”
This call addresses strategy II of the 2020-2025 MTP, which seeks to increase the number of technologies and innovations with high potential for adoption and impact on the sustainability of farming systems, agro ecosystems and the territory. To fulfill the objective of the call, initiatives must be based on prior and validated scientific knowledge, and must either promote new innovations or validate promising or successful existing ones.
FONTAGRO was created in 1998 with the objective of establishing a sustainable financing mechanism for the development of agricultural technology in LAC, and a forum for the discussion of priority topics in technological innovation. Its purpose is to promote an increase in the competitiveness of the agri-food sector, ensuring sustainable natural resource management and poverty reduction in the region. It currently has 15 country members and two sponsors, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the former being its legal representative.
Funding Information
- Duration: 36 months.
- The proposed activities must be carried out in at least two FONTAGRO member countries.
- This call will be carried out with FONTAGRO’s own resources. The total amount of the call is US$800,000. FONTAGRO will co-finance up to four proposals for a maximum amount of US$200,000 each.
Eligibility Criteria
- Regional Innovation Platform (RIP). Existing or new Regional Innovation Platforms (RIPs) will be co-financed; such RIPs should be made up of public agents or public-private alliances that come together to design and implement a regional technical cooperation project in compliance with the terms of reference of this call.
- RIP participants. RIPs should promote practices and / or institutional arrangements that promote the public and / or public-private entrepreneurial ecosystem and that create links between producers and science and academia actors. The latter must be identified and included in the initial presentation of the project’s concept note. RIPs should connect the different actors with the final users or beneficiaries. For this, they must be consisting in:
- at least one public or private scientific research center;
- direct beneficiaries who must be included in the testing or validation process;
- an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team (optional); and / or
- other partner organizations (optional).
- Administrative role of participants. As for the administrative implementation of the project, only one of the institutions should act as executing agency and, therefore, legally empowered to act as such and manage funds in United States dollars on behalf of the rest of the platform participants, who will act as coexecuting agencies (if they receive funds from FONTAGRO) and optionally as associated organizations (if they participate with their own funds).
- Technical role of participants. RIP participants must be multi- and interdisciplinary and demonstrate a multidimensional approach (productive agronomic, social, economic, technological, environmental, and / or value-added, among others) consistent with the technology or innovation that is proposed for validation. As for the complementarity of technical functions, participants may be public, private, national, regional and / or international institutions.
- General conditions regarding regionality. This call prioritizes the creation of platforms made up of partners from different regions and with different capacities and strengths in technical disciplines so that they will complement one another. The following are the defined regions: (1) Southern Cone, (2) Andean Region, (3) Central America, (4) Caribbean Region, and (5) extra-LAC region
- Particular conditions regarding regionality. FONTAGRO will co-finance proposals executed by public institutions or public-private alliances of at least two FONTAGRO member countries. This means that the activities to be carried out by the proposal must be implemented in at least those two member countries. Once this requirement has been fulfilled, other institutions from FONTAGRO non-member countries, though mandatorily from IDB member countries, and regional and international organizations will be allowed to participate as partner organizations with a facilitating or complementary role, and with their own resources
- Conditions regarding global regionality. Institutions from IDB non-member countries may participate by contributing their own funds to the RIPs; they may do so by signing an agreement either with the IDB — the legal representative of FONTAGRO — or directly with the platform institutions, in agreement with IDB / FONTAGRO.
For more information, visit https://www.fontagro.org/new/proyectos/iniciativa/5/call-2021/en