What will be the challenges agricultural research will face in the next 20 years? Based on that question, the Cooperative Program for the Development of Agricultural Technology in the Southern Cone (Programa Cooperativo para o Desenvolvimento Agroalimentar e Agroindustrial do Cone Sul - Procisur) has been training professionals from research organizations in the region in the prospection of future scenarios, as it prepares to elaborate a document that comprises projections for up to the year 2040. Between July 11 and July 14, Embrapa's headquarters in Brasilia, DF, hosted the 1st Seminar-Workshop on prospection of futures and strategic intelligence for Procisur. Participants included professionals from research organizations of the six countries that compose the program: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as guest specialists, totalling 40 people. The main goal of the event was to identify and rank the main driving forces that should influence agricultural research by 2040. Among the challenges that will impact the agrarian sciences, the specialists considered themes like climate change, new technologies, funding for innovation, intellectual property issues, alternative sources of energy, geopolitical context, and others. “The work entailed identifying and associating such different forces to understand how they will interact and generate impacts for agricultural, agrifood and agroindustrial production chains,” explains Marcos Pena Júnior, Strategic Studies supervisor of Embrapa's Secretariat of Intelligence and Macroestrategy, who participated in the event organization. For Pena, in addition to building capacities, the work should broaden participating professionals' views and inform them about future scenarios. “Discussion about driving forces in itself is already an important advance, as participating professionals will be able to identify them and consider them in their strategic planning from now on”, he states. The groupwork did not end at the seminar. In their countries, the participants are now elaborating the results from the July discussions. Such information will be presented on October 17 -20, at the headquarters of Argentina's Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Inta), in Buenos Aires. In this second seminar-workshop, the group intends to start consolidating the results that will originate the final document with exploratory scenarios for the Southern Cone, first result of this joint effort in strategic intelligence. The organization expects this publication to be ready by the end of the year. “On top of being an input for the strategic planning of agricultural research in the region and in member countries, it will be a valuable document to inform environmental, social and economic public policy. The country's own economic development can also be planned with the support of such information”, Marcos Pena believes. Procisur also intends to level up Southern Cone research organizations with respect to strategic intelligence and future prospecting activities. “Nowadays, Argentina and Brazil are regional leaders in the area, and thus they kickstarted the support to Procisur in such efforts”, Pena discloses, with a special highlight to Embrapa's Strategic Intelligence System (Agropensa). Procisur Created in 1980 with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Procisur is an integrating part of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and it is a joint initiative by agricultural research institutions of Southern Cone countries. Since 1998, the institution's main goal is to boost agricultural technology integration among member countries and thus strengthen the block's competitiveness in the world market. It was later organized into the following theme-based approaches as it adopted Regional Platforms: integral quality, natural resources and water resources, family farming, biotechnology, nanotechnology, information and communication technologies, institutional innovation, precision agriculture, and genetic resources. At the moment, the program especially aims at reducing the asymmetry among participating organizations through governance innovations and political and technical alliances, involving governments, public partners, and the private initiative. One of IICA's important branches, Procisur is currently formed by six organizations: Embrapa, in Brazil; Argentina's Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Inta); Bolivia's Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agropecuaria y Forestal (Iniaf); Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, from Chile (Inia); Instituto Paraguayo de Tecnología Agraria (IPTA); and Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria of Uruguay (Inia). Translation: Mariana Medeiros