The days when rural development focused primarily on increases in agricultural production are gone. Today's interdisciplinary agenda has broadened to include not only productivity, but also markets, livelihoods, relationships between agricultural and forestry activities and healthy environments, government policies, gender, indigenous peoples, rural businesses, and diversification.

CATIE partners with local, regional, and national organizations to manage projects and create change. This team approach makes certain that the knowledge and experience generated through these projects continues to bear fruit long after project funding ends.

The staff is organized into strategic thematic groups that address critical areas including the following:

• climate change
• clean development mechanisms
• environmental services provided by ecosystems
• annual crops, coffee, cacao, bananas, and plantains
• environmental economics and environmental policy
• water and watershed management
• restoration of degraded land
• forests and protected areas
• clean production technologies
• value chains and competitiveness of eco-enterprises

Year-round CATIE training activities reach farm families, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, students from technical high schools, extension agents, and professionals from governmental organizations and the private sector. In 2005 alone, 500 CATIE events benefited more than 15,000 people, many of them rural farmers. Participants took part in courses, workshops, tours, field days, and demonstration programs.