Istituto agronomico per l'oltremare
Encyclopedia
The Istituto agronomico per l'oltremare (IAO) (Overseas Agronomic Institute) in Florence
, Italy
, is a technical and scientific body of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
.
by Italian agronomist
s and tropicalists
, originally known as the Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano (Italian Colonial Institute), in order to promote the study and systematization
of the tropical environment and agriculture
and to implement vocational education and training of technicians and migrants, in the agricultural field.
The Institute was very busy in the years between the two World Wars, under the leadership of Armando Maugini
. It studied the agricultural and economic issues of Italian colonies and trained the technicians in charge of the economic valorization of the colonies and other regions. In 1938 the Institute changed its name, becoming the Istituto agronomico per l'Africa Italiana. After the Second World War, the Institute shifted its focus to the technical assistance to the Italians migrating to Latin America
on agricultural topics. In 1959 the Istitute received its present name and was assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
.
It is active in the field of development co-operation in Africa
, Latin America
, Asia
and Eastern Europe
. It runs agricultural development projects in developing countries, mainly on behalf of the Direzione generale per la cooperazione allo sviluppo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Institute was very active in international co-operation after the enactment of Law n. 49 (1987) framing "Italian Development Co-operation", and since then it has mainly been dealing with agricultural and rural development topics, conservation and promotion of agricultural biodiversity
and the development of sustainable agricultural technologies. The IAO collaborates with agricultural institutions, research centers, academies, associations and rural communities. The Institute directly funds small research programs on farming and the environment, in collaboration with research centers from developing countries and hosts vocational training courses, on such topics as irrigation
and geomatics
. It is endowed with a teledetection and environmental analysis laboratory and owns the Bonistallo Farm in Poggio a Caiano
, in the Province of Florence
. Recent training courses have included field stages in Tuscany
, the islands of Elba
and Sardinia
, and in the developing countries in which the Institute has field activities; Bolivia
, China
, Eritrea
, Morocco
, and Tunisia
to name a few.
The IAO Library was established in 1908 and specializes in tropical and sub-tropical agriculture and economics
, gathering over 131,000 volumes and 800 periodical magazines.
The Institute has a photographic archive and a documentation center, where historic information on agriculture in the tropics, and especially in the former Italian colonies, is stored.
The Institute publishes an international scientific magazine: The Journal of Agriculture and Environment for International Development and several series of monographic studies.
The Institute hosts a training center, and botanical garden
with a collection of tropical and subtropical plants. Its main building hosts collections of tropical agriculture products and insects.
and Libya
. This orientation accrued the Institute expertise in farming, technology, sociology
and economics of the tropics.
Such studies were intensified from 1924 to 1941, when the Institute assisted the expansion of Italian economic colonization of Africa. It participated in the elaboration of agricultural settlements plans, as well as in the training and technology transfer to Italian farmers and their families settling in the colonies. This great body of information, gathered under the direction agronomist Armando Maugini
, resulted in the collection of a wide set of written and photographic documents and in the establishment of a collection of agricultural products, plants and other items, used in the training of technicians and dissemination of information.
The output of the Institute studies and its technical proposals were implemented in the field. In order to host the growing staff and assets of the Institute, new and spacious offices were built in Florence, still home the Institute today.
After the Second World War, and the repatriation of Italian colonists from Africa, the IAO collaborated with the Italian trust administration in Somalia
, by supplying technical skills to the newly formed Somali federal government. It also assisted Italian farmers migrating to Latin America, who were benefited by the same services, such as training, technical assistance, investments planning, etc, created for the development of the Italian colonies. Such work was completed with the reshaping of the Institute endowments, under directors Armando Maugini
, Ferdinando Bigi, and Arturo Marassi. Once the Italian agricultural migration flow faded, at the beginning of the 1970s, the Institute shifted its focus to the development co-operation policies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along the patterns established by Law n. 38 (1979) and Law n. 49 (1987). Such laws established the development co-operation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, collaborating with other scientific and technical institutions, in Italy and abroad.
In the 1970s, director Vincenzo Faenza strengthened the IAO in the agro-economic field. From 1983 to 1993, director Aureliano Brandolini
enhanced IAO assets and human resources in the field of laboratory research, and broadened the collaboration with international and developing country research centers, in order to establish local knowledge and skills, and to fine tuning sustainable technologies on the spot. Since 2000, director Alice Perlini renewed the Institute's strategy, by focusing on co-operation with civil society organizations, support to the decentralized co-operation processes, and training of Italian and foreign technicians. The continuous adaptation of the IAO to new situations and activity enhancement allowed the expansion of the collaboration network and presence of the Institute in forums where agricultural development and natural resources conservation topics are debated. At the same time, the digital classification of the Institute's documentation was undertaken and internet tools, enabling a wider dissemination of the rich information heritage of the IAO, were established. The Institute organizes scientific conferences and work groups, study meetings, and other cultural events, as well as experience exchanges with other institutions in Europe and overseas.
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, is a technical and scientific body of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Italy)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the foreign ministry of the government of the Republic of Italy. It is also known as the Farnesina as a metonym from its headquarters, the Palazzo della Farnesina in Rome...
.
History
The Institute was established in 1904 in FlorenceFlorence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
by Italian agronomist
Agronomist
An agronomist is a scientist who specializes in agronomy, which is the science of utilizing plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber. An agronomist is an expert in agricultural and allied sciences, with the exception veterinary sciences.Agronomists deal with interactions between plants, soils, and...
s and tropicalists
Tropics
The tropics is a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth...
, originally known as the Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano (Italian Colonial Institute), in order to promote the study and systematization
Biological classification
Biological classification, or scientific classification in biology, is a method to group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species. Biological classification is part of scientific taxonomy....
of the tropical environment and agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and to implement vocational education and training of technicians and migrants, in the agricultural field.
The Institute was very busy in the years between the two World Wars, under the leadership of Armando Maugini
Armando Maugini
Armando Maugini was an Italian agronomist and tropicalist. Maugini shaped and directed the activities of the Istituto agricolo coloniale italiano, presently the Istituto agronomico per l'oltremare in Florence for forty years.After several years of agronomic field trials and extension in Libya and...
. It studied the agricultural and economic issues of Italian colonies and trained the technicians in charge of the economic valorization of the colonies and other regions. In 1938 the Institute changed its name, becoming the Istituto agronomico per l'Africa Italiana. After the Second World War, the Institute shifted its focus to the technical assistance to the Italians migrating to Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
on agricultural topics. In 1959 the Istitute received its present name and was assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Organization
The IAO mandate is to study, train, advise, and support initiatives dealing with tropical and sub-tropical agriculture and environmental protectionEnvironmental protection
Environmental protection is a practice of protecting the environment, on individual, organizational or governmental level, for the benefit of the natural environment and humans. Due to the pressures of population and our technology the biophysical environment is being degraded, sometimes permanently...
.
It is active in the field of development co-operation in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. It runs agricultural development projects in developing countries, mainly on behalf of the Direzione generale per la cooperazione allo sviluppo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Institute was very active in international co-operation after the enactment of Law n. 49 (1987) framing "Italian Development Co-operation", and since then it has mainly been dealing with agricultural and rural development topics, conservation and promotion of agricultural biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
and the development of sustainable agricultural technologies. The IAO collaborates with agricultural institutions, research centers, academies, associations and rural communities. The Institute directly funds small research programs on farming and the environment, in collaboration with research centers from developing countries and hosts vocational training courses, on such topics as irrigation
Irrigation
Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
and geomatics
Geomatics
Geomatics is the discipline of gathering, storing, processing, and delivering geographic information, or spatially referenced information.-Overview and etymology:...
. It is endowed with a teledetection and environmental analysis laboratory and owns the Bonistallo Farm in Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano is a town and comune in the Province of Prato, Tuscany region Italy. The town lies 9 km south of the provincial capital of Prato.-The Medici villa:...
, in the Province of Florence
Province of Florence
The Province of Florence is a province in the Tuscany region of Italy. It has an area of 3,514 sq. km and a population of 933,860 in 44 comuni....
. Recent training courses have included field stages in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
, the islands of Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...
and Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
, and in the developing countries in which the Institute has field activities; Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Eritrea
Eritrea
Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...
, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, and Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
to name a few.
The IAO Library was established in 1908 and specializes in tropical and sub-tropical agriculture and economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, gathering over 131,000 volumes and 800 periodical magazines.
The Institute has a photographic archive and a documentation center, where historic information on agriculture in the tropics, and especially in the former Italian colonies, is stored.
The Institute publishes an international scientific magazine: The Journal of Agriculture and Environment for International Development and several series of monographic studies.
The Institute hosts a training center, and botanical garden
Botanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
with a collection of tropical and subtropical plants. Its main building hosts collections of tropical agriculture products and insects.
Activities
The Institute was involved in the several phases of the Italian overseas expansion. In the first twenty years of its existence, 1904 to 1924, it focused on the study of the natural resources and assets of Eritrea, SomaliaSomalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
and Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
. This orientation accrued the Institute expertise in farming, technology, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and economics of the tropics.
Such studies were intensified from 1924 to 1941, when the Institute assisted the expansion of Italian economic colonization of Africa. It participated in the elaboration of agricultural settlements plans, as well as in the training and technology transfer to Italian farmers and their families settling in the colonies. This great body of information, gathered under the direction agronomist Armando Maugini
Armando Maugini
Armando Maugini was an Italian agronomist and tropicalist. Maugini shaped and directed the activities of the Istituto agricolo coloniale italiano, presently the Istituto agronomico per l'oltremare in Florence for forty years.After several years of agronomic field trials and extension in Libya and...
, resulted in the collection of a wide set of written and photographic documents and in the establishment of a collection of agricultural products, plants and other items, used in the training of technicians and dissemination of information.
The output of the Institute studies and its technical proposals were implemented in the field. In order to host the growing staff and assets of the Institute, new and spacious offices were built in Florence, still home the Institute today.
After the Second World War, and the repatriation of Italian colonists from Africa, the IAO collaborated with the Italian trust administration in Somalia
Trust Territory of Somalia
The Trust Territory of Somalia was a United Nations Trust Territory that was administered by Italy from 1949 to 1960, following the dissolution of the former Italian Somaliland inside the territory of modern-day Somalia.-History:In 1941, Italian Somaliland was occupied by British and South African...
, by supplying technical skills to the newly formed Somali federal government. It also assisted Italian farmers migrating to Latin America, who were benefited by the same services, such as training, technical assistance, investments planning, etc, created for the development of the Italian colonies. Such work was completed with the reshaping of the Institute endowments, under directors Armando Maugini
Armando Maugini
Armando Maugini was an Italian agronomist and tropicalist. Maugini shaped and directed the activities of the Istituto agricolo coloniale italiano, presently the Istituto agronomico per l'oltremare in Florence for forty years.After several years of agronomic field trials and extension in Libya and...
, Ferdinando Bigi, and Arturo Marassi. Once the Italian agricultural migration flow faded, at the beginning of the 1970s, the Institute shifted its focus to the development co-operation policies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along the patterns established by Law n. 38 (1979) and Law n. 49 (1987). Such laws established the development co-operation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, collaborating with other scientific and technical institutions, in Italy and abroad.
In the 1970s, director Vincenzo Faenza strengthened the IAO in the agro-economic field. From 1983 to 1993, director Aureliano Brandolini
Aureliano Brandolini
Aureliano Brandolini was an Italian agronomist and development cooperation scholar.Born in Calolziocorte, Italy, after studying at Liceo Alessandro Manzoni high school in Lecco with Giovanni Ticozzi, he graduated in agriculture at the University of Milan in 1950 and specialized in plant breeding...
enhanced IAO assets and human resources in the field of laboratory research, and broadened the collaboration with international and developing country research centers, in order to establish local knowledge and skills, and to fine tuning sustainable technologies on the spot. Since 2000, director Alice Perlini renewed the Institute's strategy, by focusing on co-operation with civil society organizations, support to the decentralized co-operation processes, and training of Italian and foreign technicians. The continuous adaptation of the IAO to new situations and activity enhancement allowed the expansion of the collaboration network and presence of the Institute in forums where agricultural development and natural resources conservation topics are debated. At the same time, the digital classification of the Institute's documentation was undertaken and internet tools, enabling a wider dissemination of the rich information heritage of the IAO, were established. The Institute organizes scientific conferences and work groups, study meetings, and other cultural events, as well as experience exchanges with other institutions in Europe and overseas.