The Plenary has approved on Wednesday, the Provisional Presidential Decree 504/10, that allows the government to create offices of Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) abroad. With favorable opinion of the rapporteur Fernando Coelho Filho, the Provisional Presidential Decree was approved with no changes and will be now sent to the Senate.

The Executive objective is to give more flexibility to the corporation for the exchange of technologies, mainly in countries with which Brazil has signed international agreements with this purpose.

An example is the memorandum of understanding signed with Ghana, in 2006, which provided the opening of a regional office of Embrapa in the African country. Due to the legal impediment from before the Provisional Presidential Decree, the office could not be created.

External Policy
The opening of the corporation branches abroad is part of the external policy of cooperation implanted by the government. One of the offices will be Embrapa Américas, in Panama, that will have, according to the corporation, the aim of supporting initiatives linked to the development of capacities, to food safety and to the assurance of Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and Andean region export agenda.

Embrapa Américas will act in three fronts: research and development platform, technology transfer and technological businesses. The deputy Jonas Donizette has evaluated that Brazil shall share its technology with poorer countries that, although having agricultural potential, does not have means to invest in the sector.  “We need to discover new technologies to food development and cooperate with countries that do not share the same intelligence, but have the potential to produce”, he argued.

Laboratories
Before the Provisional Presidential Decree, the corporation used to set up Embrapa Virtual Laboratories Abroad (Labex), which address particularly cutting edge research.

It has partnerships with laboratories in the United States and Europe (France, Holland and England) for the development of researches and agreements of technology transfers to developing countries in Africa, South America, Central America and Caribbean.