Fertile Ground for Innovation: When Science, Business, and Farmers Unite

Agriculture needs allies to face well-documented challenges: climate change, soil degradation, and limited access to seeds, technologies, and best practices. If we rely solely on the good will of a few (and especially in a global context where funding priorities shift rapidly) we risk falling short of the pace required to meet present and future demands.

What do a group of rice farmers, a family-run forage business, and a research hub have in common? When they combine their strengths toward a shared goal, they create fertile ground to grow, innovate, and overcome these challenges. Such is the case of the Latin American Fund for Irrigated Rice (FLAR, for its Spanish acronym) and Grupo Papalotla, who, together with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, are celebrating three decades of significant contributions to agriculture and the building of strong cooperation networks between farmers, academia, and the public and private sectors.

These partners understand that, beyond acknowledging the value of agriculture, we must ensure it has the incentives, innovation, and support needed to remain the pillar of our food systems, a fundamental human right. Over the past three decades, the Alliance has worked with FLAR and Papalotla as a key partner, aligning visions across sectors and jointly creating science-based solution packages. This work extends beyond products, offering technologies and methodologies that add value to agricultural production, complementing one another with a broad regional reach that even transcends continental borders.