Centro Internazionale Crocevia has been founded in 1958, and recognized as Ente Morale in 1962 by the President of the Republic of Italy. Since the late 70s, Crocevia worked on the agricultural biodiversity, in more than 70 countries, supporting local food producers’ organizations to connect local and global policies within the UN Food Agencies. From the 90s, Crocevia worked directly with the emerging Transnational Agrarian Movements (TAMs: Peasants, Fisher folks, Pastoralists, Consumers, Urban poors, Indigenous Peoples, etc) on the advocacy processes at institutional level as FAO, IFAD and European Union. Crocevia supported the global coordination among Small Scale food producers organization through the creation of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, which since 1996 opened up the space for autonomous and self/organized participation of Food producers in FAO processes, and the CFS reform.
Indeed, Crocevia organized the NGO parallel Forum during the 1996 FAO World Food Summit and acted as International Focal point of the IPC (1996-2012) and as IPC Secretariat (2012-2017), facilitating the participation of Small Scale Food producers organizations in the FAO processes as the CFS reform with the creation of the Civil Society Mechanism and the CSOs consultation for the approval of the FAO partnership with CSOs.
Crocevia supported the signature of the FAO – IPC exchange of letters (2003, 2014, 2017), and facilitated the CSOs participation in the FAO regional conferences. Furthermore Crocevia has been facilitating the relationship between FAO and CSOs at global and regional level in order to ensure a meaningful and inclusive participation of in all the FAO policy discussions as FAO Technical Committees (COAG, COFI, CGRFA), the ITPGRFA, the International Year of Family Farming, Agroecology Symposia, RAI consultation, (International and regional ones), Biotech Symposia (International and regional ones), Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, LEAP, Pastoralist Hub, Indigenous Food Systems, Agroecology and the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure, and the implementation at regional and national level of the policy outcomes