CATIE and Micro Plants seek partnership to boost the economy of the agricultural sector in Costa Rica

• It will be an alliance between academia and the private sector with an enormous potential to generate value in productive processes that will ultimately benefit rural families

18 May 2020. The private company, Micro Plantas de Costa Rica S.A., and CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) are in the process of generating a strategic alliance that will allow them to promote the economic development of the Costa Rican agricultural sector, generating value in the productive processes through innovation and knowledge derived from research.

In this case, they value projects related to traditional products such as coffee or cocoa, but also innovative products such as hemp. This after the Costa Rican government announced that it would support the production of this plant in the country, considered by the Costa Rican Foreign Trade Promotion Agency (PROCOMER, its Spanish acronym) as one of the 10 agricultural products with the most potential.

The alliance would also involve other actors such as Inversiones y Capitales Rotativos ÍCARO S.A., represented by José Luis Fernández and Paolo Borsani, and the agro-industrial entrepreneur, Juan Ramón Alvarado.

According to Muhammad Ibrahim, CATIE's director general, these alliances can enable the applied research carried out at the Center to become an innovation tool for the country's productive sectors. 'We have more than 30 years doing research on coffee and cocoa varieties, products that have been very relevant for the development of the countries in the region. Now, hemp is also presented as a highly profitable and important alternative for economic recovery,' said Ibrahim.

Fernando Alvarado, general manager of Micro Plantas de Costa Rica, explained that the objective is to generate a prototype for the different processes of hemp, within the framework of a relationship between private enterprise, academia, investors and other interested institutions, taking into account the capabilities of different actors to develop a successful project at the country level, which in turn can be scaled to 13 other countries in the region and also benefit the rural population by bringing new technologies.

According to Carlos Araya, from CATIE's Business Development Office, the coordination meetings of this consortium will continue to take place and will set the guidelines to be followed so that, in the very short term, the results are concrete and the impact on the country's economy becomes a reality.

More information:
Carlos Araya
Business Development Office
CATIE
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Written by:
Karla Salazar Leiva
Communicator
Information Technology and Communication
CATIE
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