Microsoft and IICA create open access video platform on agriculture

San Jose, 11 July 2019 (IICA). Microsoft and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) have launched IICA Play, an innovative platform that democratizes access to knowledge by making technical and educational content and other information related to crop production and livestock farming available to producers, researchers, students, and young professionals. The platform was launched at IICA Headquarters during a ceremony attended by the Director of Education for Microsoft Latin America, Luciano Braverman, and the Institute’s Director General, Manuel Otero.

An open access platform, IICA Play is designed to reduce digital and educational divides for rural populations, including women and young people. It provides access to the knowledge and information required to tackle challenges and obtain tools for raising productivity, and to mitigate problems derived from extreme weather events, migration from rural territories and the exhaustion of natural resources, among others.

“IICA Play will offer quality content and make learning tools available to farmers in the Americas that will improve decision-making in the countryside by offering concrete solutions to problems common to many countries in the hemisphere. It will provide useful, dynamic content produced by organizations specializing in agriculture and validated in rural areas, and by the Institute’s own specialists. Digital technology is key to helping to close gaps in productivity and create opportunities, and our partnership with Microsoft is essential for that purpose,” explained Manuel Otero, Director General of IICA.

“Thanks to this platform, regardless of their farm size and specialization, producers in every country of the region will have access to technical know-how and best practices for improving productivity and making better use of their own resources and natural resources. The platform provides an opportunity to overcome one of the biggest obstacles in Latin America: access to knowledge. It is a true driver of equity, as it affords everyone access to a level of expertise to which only large agroindustrial operations could aspire. The digital transformation of the countryside empowers communities and future generations,” observed Luciano Braverman, Director of Education for Microsoft Latin America.

IICA Play will add further content as it develops new synergies between the public and private agricultural sectors. Bayer and Brazil’s National Rural Learning Service (SENAR) are two of the of the Microsoft/IICA platform’s main content providers. Agrotendencia TV, a specialized channel, is another important content provider, while IICA produces its own content as well.

The content is available in high definition, in Spanish, English and Portuguese; and adapts to the user’s bandwidth (data transfer speed) anywhere in the world. This makes for immediate, smooth viewing on computers, cell phones and tablets. The platform is available at: http://play.iica.int

More information:

Institutional Communications Division

comunicación.institucional@iica.int