TECA was launched officially during the 2002 Consultation on Agricultural Information Management (COAIM), to help FAO technical units and its partners and projects to better preserve the knowledge of successful technologies and good practises in the field. From the beginning the agriculture research centres at international and national level have been involved in the initiative that, also targets non-governmental organizations, farmer associations, universities and academic centres, as well as other organizations focused on technology transfer.

Visiting the TECA Web site the user will have free access to information and knowledge on proven technologies for small-scale farmers with categories such as animal, crops and horticulture production, grasslands and forest and non-timber forest products post-harvest, natural resources management, and fish culture and aquaculture.

There are many different options to collaborate with the initiative as a partners. Partners have access to the Intranet where they can use the tools developed by an interdisciplinary team to document technologies on-line in a template that enables the partner to attach pictures and various types of files. Partners can benefit from free support and maintenance of the central database installed in FAO headquarters' servers, or they can request the code and the structure of the database to install this powerful tool in their on servers and Web sites. TECA also offers other additional services to the most actively involved partners on demand. Partners will have the opportunity to better preserve and disseminate their technologies and good practices through a central gateway and will interact with other key institutions working in the same field to develop linkages and partnerships.

In addition to the geographical options, by country and other levels, to save and retrieve information, TECA has a new and essential option with the farming system categories described in the study jointly conducted by FAO and the World Bank Farming Systems and Poverty . This helps to place the technology in relation to the environmental and social context.

It is an FAO initiative that promotes the documentation and transfer of proven and successful technologies for small-scale farmers in member countries. To know more about its objectives visit the page “About TECA”.