Top agricultural leaders from two key inter-American organizations have sealed a new collaborative agreement to advance a unified regional agenda focused on lifting up agricultural resilience and productivity across Mesoamerica. The deal was reached during working meetings hosted at the headquarters of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in Costa Rica, bringing together IICA Director General Muhammad Ibrahim and David Martínez, Executive Secretary of the Central American Agricultural Council (CAC).
A public statement issued by IICA outlines that the joint agenda will center on three high-priority pillars critical to the region’s agricultural growth: expanding accessible agricultural insurance products, establishing regional guarantee funds, and refining targeted financing mechanisms to deliver much-needed support to small and large agricultural actors across the area. Beyond these core focus areas, the discussions also centered on deepening institutional collaboration around project design, streamlined resource allocation, and on-the-ground operational support for shared initiatives. As part of the growing partnership, Martínez formally extended an invitation for Ibrahim to take part in upcoming strategic CAC planning meetings scheduled for the coming weeks.
To contextualize the partnership, the CAC operates as the official agricultural governing body under the Central American Integration System, tasked with developing and rolling out coordinated regional policies and cross-border projects spanning agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Its membership includes the national agriculture ministers of eight regional economies: Belize, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. At its core, the organization’s overarching mission is to advance regional food security and raise the global competitiveness of Central America’s agricultural sectors.
One of the most urgent topics on the meeting’s agenda was preparing for the forecasted intense El Niño event projected to hit Central America later this year. Climatic forecasts warn that this event could bring extreme drought to the region’s vulnerable Dry Corridor, alongside sustained higher-than-average temperatures and significantly reduced rainfall across large swathes of agricultural land. During talks, both leaders prioritized developing data-driven decision-support tools built on peer-reviewed scientific evidence and actionable lessons drawn from past El Niño events to help farmers and policymakers adapt to coming climate shocks.
Martínez’s official visit also served as an opportunity to reinforce long-term institutional ties between the two organizations, underscoring the critical value of coordinated regional collective action on a range of shared challenges. These cross-cutting issues include agricultural biosecurity, sustained food security, the complex links between agricultural disruption and human migration, and inclusive regional market development.
For IICA, Central America has grown in strategic importance in recent years as a hub for project delivery, as well as technical and administrative support for national-level agricultural programs across the hemisphere. As such, IICA officials framed the deepened partnership with the CAC Executive Secretariat and other regional stakeholders as a core strategic priority for the institute’s work in the coming years, positioning the alliance to deliver tangible, long-term benefits for agricultural communities across Mesoamerica.