The Offices in the 34 member countries have embarked on a process of dialogue, promoted by the Director General, to equip the Institute with the operational mechanisms it requires to achieve its medium-term goals.
San Jose, Costa Rica, June 2014 (IICA). The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) has embarked on a process of dialogue in order to construct the instruments it will need to implement its four flagship projects and contribute to the achievement of the major transformations in the hemisphere’s agricultural sector proposed in IICA’s 2014-2018 Medium-term Plan (MTP).
The dialogue, involving the Institute’s Offices in its 34 member countries and Headquarters in Costa Rica, will strengthen the integration of the organization as “A single, results-driven IICA,” a concept that also reflects the organization’s main strength, according to its Director General, Víctor M. Villalobos.
“Under this new paradigm, there is no difference between Headquarters and the Offices in the countries, as our relationship is symbiotic. That is how the Institute was conceived and designed, it is our strategy and our strength,” Villalobos remarked during the Third Institutional Management Meeting, held in San Jose.
The activity took place from June 16-20. The objective was to improve teamwork and multidisciplinary coordination among the Institute’s technical personnel, link the projects executed more closely with the results achieved, find mechanisms to replicate the successful experiences of some countries in others, and ensure that IICA has the necessary flexibility to respond to requests for specialized assistance in agriculture.
IICA aims to harness all its technical capacity and enhance the efficiency of its human and financial resources in order to respond better to the requests it receives at a crucial moment for agriculture in the hemisphere, a sector recognized as a source of food for the world’s growing population that has a key role to play in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
“No one is more convinced than I am that agriculture can be an excellent business for everyone, a business that is highly profitable in economic terms but even more profitable in social terms. IICA’s core business is technical cooperation in agriculture, it is what we know how to do and what we do best,” Villalobos observed.
The 2014-2018 MTP establishes IICA’s four flagship projects and the other instruments it intends to use to meet the technical cooperation needs of its 34 member countries. The flagship projects are as follows:
1. Competitiveness and sustainability of agricultural chains for food security
2. Inclusion in agriculture and rural territories
3. Resilience and comprehensive risk management in agriculture, and
4. Productivity and sustainability of family agriculture for food security and the rural economy.
The other instruments are externally funded projects, rapid response actions (to address requests for specific support with emerging issues in the countries) and the Technical Cooperation Fund (FonTC), a competitive mechanism that already exists that will be strengthened to finance pre-investment initiatives.
For further information:
diego.montenegro@iica.int
salvador.fernandez@iica.int
Images: Third Institutional Management Meeting
