Brazilian official meets with Cardi

A del­e­ga­tion from Brazil’s Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture vis­it­ed the head­quar­ters of the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Car­di) in St. Au­gus­tine to dis­cuss strate­gies aimed at deep­en­ing agri­cul­tur­al in­no­va­tion and re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the in­sti­tute, the high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Dr. Muham­mad Ibrahim, Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA); Di­ana Fran­cis, IICA Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Trinidad and To­ba­go; Cle­ber Soares, Deputy Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Live­stock of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Brazil; and Priscila Rech Moser, Agri­cul­tur­al At­taché at the Em­bassy of Brazil in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The vis­it­ing of­fi­cials met with Car­di’s lead­er­ship team, led by ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Ansari Ho­sein, along with Fayaz Shah (man­ag­er, sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion), Tris­tan Al­varez (man­ag­er, plan­ning and re­source mo­bil­i­sa­tion), and Cur­tis Nero (Head, fi­nance unit). Dis­cus­sions cen­tered on sev­er­al on­go­ing re­gion­al projects and fu­ture av­enues of tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the Caribbean, IICA, and Brazil.

The Brazil­ian deputy min­is­ter was giv­en a live demon­stra­tion of in­no­v­a­tive dig­i­tal track­ing tech­nol­o­gy de­ployed by Car­di to de­tect the lar­vae of the South Amer­i­can Palm Wee­vil. This tech­nol­o­gy plays a crit­i­cal role in mit­i­gat­ing the pest’s spread, safe­guard­ing the re­gion’s co­conut and palm in­dus­tries.

The strate­gic cour­tesy call fea­tured a spe­cial ex­hi­bi­tion which show­cased tan­gi­ble out­puts from the CAR­DI-IICA part­ner­ship such as a dis­play pf com­mer­cial-grade soy­beans and black beans pro­duced in Be­lize, and mul­ti­ple cli­mate-re­silient va­ri­eties of sweet pota­to.

The in­sti­tute said the meet­ing dis­played a shared com­mit­ment to de­ploy­ing cut­ting-edge agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence and cross-bor­der part­ner­ships to build a more sus­tain­able and cli­mate-re­silient food sys­tem across the Amer­i­c­as and the Caribbean.