Events

São Paulo, Brazil 

OCP Policy Center, in partnership with CINDES, will be organizing a workshop on the morning of Tuesday, July 18th, in which renowned Moroccan and Brazilian experts will address the question of agriculture from the perspectives of their respective countries, and discuss the potential for prospective bilateral relations on this matter. 

The last 15 years have seen remarkable transformations in farming practices, institutional frameworks, and policies for agriculture in the Southern Cone of South America. A combination of dynamic international markets and the diffusion of bioinformatics technology are shifting large-scale farming toward a new organizational model. At the other end of the spectrum, efforts have been made to reinsert family farming into institutional markets such as school meals and public crop purchases. This workshop will discuss the changes and their potential relevance for African agriculture. The Brazilian experience makes clear that only a combination of agricultural zoning, agreements on responsible agricultural investments, and guidelines on land tenure, which in their turn condition access to credit, can ensure an institutional framework for effective agricultural policies. It seems clear that policy continuity is a precondition for success in the promotion of food production and agricultural and rural development.

The workshop will provide a platform for the experts to discuss the lessons learned from the Brazilian agricultural revolution and the feasibility of implementation of the core elements of the latter in the context of Africa (i.e. aggregation, fertilize market development, ago-processing like cocoa, etc.).

On a parallel note, the workshop will also tackle what Africa can bring to Brazil in this sector. The outcome of the workshop is to be presented later in the format of a blog post or a brief.

Agenda