each country, their economic consequences, and the equally variable capacity to mitigate and adapt to them.
     Countries in the region with a more developed scientific research structure perceive the threat of climate change and thus the need for R&D in this area. But there are still financial and management limitations in obtaining results applicable to adaptation to and mitigation of the climate
problem.
     Some LAC countries adopt measures of technological innovation, social development, environmental protection and biosecurity, but due to political and budget limitations, achievements fall short of expectations. Changes in government generally lead to changes in management of public institutions, which frequently interrupt the continuity needed to obtain results. Either because of their own internal conviction (the case of countries more dependent on agribusiness) or because of their dependence on external resources, the countries of the region adopt more coherent biosecurity policies based on protocols imported from more developed countries, which fully subsidize implementation of such policies.
     There is a slow transition towards implementation of food quality standards and regulations, and enforcement of them. Governments are initially responsible for management of health standards and anti-terrorism measures, but towards the end of the period, transnational companies are as well. During this period, transnational corporations are only interested in the most economical production chains, and this can lead to problems in the consumption of some types of foods produced by family farmers.
     The education offered by the public school system, especially in the poorest countries, does not produce good results, even when governments give it high priority. Private education frequently offers defective and poor quality courses and teachers. There is strong social pressure to improve the educational structure of the region.
     While rich countries make major investments in basic science to develop new technologies, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and information science, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico make limited investments, and the other countries very limited ones. Consequently, the region moves further away from pioneering scientific development, capable of sustaining important advances in production technologies for agricultural systems and agriculture, and from the development efforts needed for product differentiation and an improvement in the competitive capacity of countries.
     Few people recognize the value of traditional knowledge in LAC. It is appreciated by NGOs that advocate environmental sustainability and social inclusion, and also by a few large private companies that are interested in this knowledge to create new products, such as pharmaceuticals or plant-based insecticides, intensively used by agricultural production systems.

3.4.3.1.2 AKST systems
As a result of scarce economic resources in LAC and the social problems of its population, R&D for the most part goes to ensure the food supply and economic efficiency, with priority given to increasing productivity in agriculture. Environmental sustainability, differentiation, and product

quality are not priority items in the public or private sector, but instead are issues addressed by personal initiatives in R&D organizations.
     The capacity to incorporate advances in formal knowledge into agriculture varies widely among the different LAC countries. Some, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, even apply their limited advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology to more dynamic production chains in agribusiness. The poorer countries, with limited R&D resources and infrastructure, are confined to adapting or importing technology. The few countries with the capacity to generate technologies incorporate little traditional knowledge during this period.
     Public R&D organizations have problems establishing lines of action, defining priorities, and especially coordinating the entire research effort. There is also a loss of personnel and technical and management capacity in the public R&D system, in some cases because of the retirement of professionals, and in others due to a shift to other more remunerative jobs.
     As a result of limited public and private investment in research and the priorities set by R&D institutions, at the end of this period there is a wide gap between the scientific and technological capacity of LAC countries and that of developed countries such as Japan, Germany, and the United States, and also among the countries in the region themselves. For some areas of application regarded as strategic, a few countries in the region begin to import technology from rich countries, which leads to renewed interest in LAC in renovating existing public R&D structures or creating new ones.
     The situation in the different countries in the region continues to be widely disparate. Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, traditional exporters of agricultural commodities, invest more public and private monies in R&D than the other countries. However, these regional investments continue to be proportionally lower than those of other regions of the world, except for Africa. In certain export production chains and in countries where they exist and where laws to protect innovation are in force, an increase in private investment in research is observed.
     Due to the scarcity of financial resources and the competition for them with other areas such as health and security, most governments of the region reduce public investment in science, technology, and education. There are financial resources to use for international support in solving problems related primarily to environmental sustainability, social inclusion,
and biosecurity.
     In LAC countries without relatively institutionalized public AKST structures, there are technology transfer and adaptive research programs in operation. In countries with more institutionalized public AKST structures, competition over work spaces is triggered between the public and private sectors, principally in relation to generation of technology to make production chains more dynamic. This competition between public and private institutions is driven by the economic return on AKST investment, as a result of knowledge protection laws. In commodity-exporting countries in the region, the technologies generated by public and private AKST systems
are oriented more toward intensive agriculture for export,