San José, 3 June 2026 –Ministers of Agriculture from the region and senior representatives of ECLAC, FAO, IICA, and CAF participated in the launch event of the report Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: A Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean 2025–2026, which states that agriculture can strengthen its contribution to agrifood systems through productivity improvements driven by adequate financing as well as policy, institutional, financial, and technological innovations.
The new report, jointly prepared by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, was presented during a virtual event attended by José Antonio López Leonardo, Deputy Minister of Rural Economic Development of Guatemala; Muhammad Ibrahim, Director General of IICA; José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC; Rene Orellana Halkyer, Deputy Director General of FAO and Regional Representative for LAC; and Maximiliano Alonso, Senior Advisor of the Corporate Vice Presidency of Strategic Programming at CAF; along with other authorities and specialists from the regional agriculture sector.
During the event, Deputy Minister López highlighted the adoption of Guatemala’s 2026–2032 Sectoral Policy for Agriculture, aimed at sustainably and equitably strengthening rural development, driving coordination between different sector institutions, improving access to productive resources, strengthening agricultural health systems, and supporting decision-making through agroclimatic roundtables. “Its objective is to increase, in an equitable and sustainable manner, the sector’s contribution to national economic development by expanding productive and food opportunities for rural families,” he stated.
“We must ensure that productivity becomes a central objective of policies aimed at achieving economic growth and greater social mobility and equity. Technological, scientific, and institutional innovations are public goods that require sustained public investment and policies for equitable access. Increasing the productivity of family farming simultaneously improves food security, rural employment, and equity,” said IICA Director General Muhammad Ibrahim.
“Agriculture can become a decisive engine for overcoming the low-growth trap affecting Latin America and the Caribbean, which is closely tied to stagnant productivity. But this will not happen automatically: we need explicit and deliberate productive development policies, along with investment, capacities, innovation, financing, and market access. Productivity does not occur in a vacuum: it is built in territories, through governance, public-private coordination, and local capacities. That is both the challenge and the great opportunity we have to transform the region’s agrifood systems,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC.
“At FAO, we are working to accelerate the productive transformation of the agrifood sector through technologies such as precision agriculture, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and other solutions adapted to local realities, as well as by closing gaps in strategic infrastructure. To that end, we must strengthen coordination between commercial banks, development banks, and multilateral organizations in order to expand access to adequate and innovative financial instruments for producers. In this regard, FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative has mobilized USD 1.75 billion in the region to accelerate agricultural and rural development in the most underserved territories,” said Rene Orellana Halkyer, Deputy Director General of FAO and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Increasing productivity is essential for building more resilient agrifood systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. To achieve this, we need a comprehensive approach that combines technological innovation, adequate financing, coordinated public policies, and a strong commitment to social equity. Without productivity there is no sustainability, and without sustainability there will be no lasting productivity,” said Maximiliano Alonso, Senior Advisor of the Corporate Vice Presidency of Strategic Programming at CAF.
A strategic priority for the region
The study warns that increasing agricultural productivity is now a strategic priority for the region because it determines not only the ability to produce more affordable food at a lower cost, but also the capacity to respond to growing demand for healthy, nutritious, safe, and sustainably produced food, while ensuring food security, rural employment, greater income for producers, and the resilience of agrifood systems to environmental and economic shocks.
It emphasizes that although Latin America and the Caribbean has demonstrated strong productive capacity in several areas over the past decades, progress has been uneven and the region now faces a triple challenge: producing more, doing so sustainably, and ensuring social inclusion.
The publication highlights that, over the last decade, total factor productivity (TFP) in the region increased by only 5%, equivalent to 0.9% annually, driven by technological advances such as the development and adoption of improved seeds, biotechnology, mechanization, precision agriculture, new irrigation systems, and more sustainable production practices. At the same time, it notes that nearly 75% of production growth came from greater use of inputs and only 25% from efficiency improvements, reflecting growing dependence on fertilizers and agrochemicals.
The report identifies six major bottlenecks behind stagnant agricultural productivity: structural heterogeneity, technological gaps, weak governance, territorial and digital inequalities, human talent limitations, and financing constraints.
In this regard, the document states that around 16 million small farms —more than 80% of the regional total—face severe limitations in access to land, technology, financing, and markets; just 15% of small producers have access to formal credit; and only 39 percent of rural households have internet access.
It also states that increasing agricultural productivity is key to reducing the cost of a healthy diet in the region, which is currently the highest in the world. In 2024, the regional average cost was estimated at USD 5.16 in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) per person per day, above the global average of USD 4.46. As a result, around 28% of the regional population cannot afford a healthy diet, a figure that rises to 50% in the Caribbean.
A comprehensive and multidimensional approach
Against this backdrop, the document by ECLAC, FAO, IICA, and CAF proposes advancing toward a new, more comprehensive and multidimensional approach to productivity that combines economic efficiency with environmental sustainability and social inclusion.
It proposes a new generation of public policies aimed at strengthening agricultural research, expanding access to financing, modernizing technical assistance and rural extension services, promoting digital transformation, and encouraging more sustainable and diversified production systems.
The report explains that the future of agricultural growth will depend, more and more, on efficiency and innovation. It notes that, between 2023 and 2032, 79% of the global increase in crop production will come from productivity improvements and only 15% from the expansion of agricultural land.
The publication stresses that overcoming agricultural productivity stagnation requires removing structural barriers, strengthening regional cooperation, and building coordinated policies capable of connecting innovation, financing, knowledge, and sustainability, for which it proposes eight lines of action.
These are: enabling policies as the structural basis for productive transformation; financing as an ecosystem that mobilizes the requisite resources for innovation and sustainability; technical assistance and rural extension services that strengthen productivity capacities; technology and digital innovation leading toward smart and inclusive agriculture; an efficient and smart use of inputs and natural resources; sustainable and diversified production systems; trade and regional integration as engines of productivity and innovation; and value addition at origin to retain and multiply value in territories.
The event concluded with remarks by agronomist and renowned journalist Héctor Huergo, who currently serves as the Director of Clarín Rural in Argentina. Huergo called on the organizations behind the document to “go beyond their own borders and collaborate so that this new narrative on the role of agriculture in the Americas reaches the international stage.”
“The document lays out the problems, the relatively low productivity, and generally heterogeneous situation in which some countries boast some of the highest productivity levels on the planet while others are still somewhat stuck in the mud of helplessness caused by structural problems that we have not been able to solve. Fortunately, this report places that task squarely on the table. It is a call for governments to move forward in the right direction to reduce the gap between those moving at a high speed and those still trapped in backwardness and overall lack of progress,” he concluded.
More information:
Full report: The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: A Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean 2025-2026
Joaquín Arias, Head of the Public Policy Observatory for Agrifood Systems at IICA.
joaquin.arias@iica.int
ECLAC Public Information Unit in Santiago, Chile.
prensa@cepal.org
Phone: +562 2210 2040
María Elena Álvarez Inostroza, Press and Content Officer, Regional Communications Unit of the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Maria.Alvarez@fao.org
Habbid Rivero, Communications Consultant, Technical Advisory Directorate on Biodiversity and Climate at CAF.
HABBID.RIVERO_EXTERNO@CAF.COM
