Welcome to our fourth newsletter of 2016
IICA Representative in the USA,
Head of CAESPA
Traditionally, summer is a time when activities slowdown in Washington, however this has not been the case for our Delegation. The last two months have been rather busy on all fronts for our professionals. They have continued to work to achieve results in their respective projects, while increasing our collaboration with partners across the continent.
During this period our Institute made public its 2015 annual report in a new user friendly format and we invite all of you to review it: annualreport.iica.int
Some of the highlights of this report include:
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The implementation of 5 hemispheric projects with IICA resources in areas of agricultural value chains, family agriculture, social inclusion, resilience of food systems and animal and plant health and food safety.
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Over 47 “rapid response actions” designed to help country members to address pressing issues for agriculture, including emergencies.
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Close to 95 US million dollars executed in projects with external resources to the benefit of our country members.
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More than 27,000 actors of the agricultural sector and rural territories benefited from IICA capacity building, training and information efforts in adaptation to climate change, innovation, trade, business, health, public policies and rural development.
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301 scholarships recipients to conduct their master and Ph D. programs in Mexican Institutions.
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A historic increase of 6.57% in our budget quotas beginning in 2016.
On July 6, 2016, the President of the United States of America, Barak Obama, signed into law the “Global Food Security Act of 2016”, passed as a bipartisan legislation confirming the commitment of the United States of America to tackle the pressing problems of food security and poverty around the world. This document states the objectives, definitions, strategy and principles that will guide the actions of the United States in food and nutritional security and on the promotion of agriculture-led development. This is an event that surely will impact agricultural development in our region.
On August, our Institute conducted the Thirty-Six Regular Meeting of its Executive Committee in our Headquarters in Coronado, Costa Rica. This was an opportunity to review progress and to address managerial and technical issues to strengthen IICA´s contributions.
In a much happier note, the IICA family in Washington welcomed the arrival of Lucas Peter Rodriguez, the son of Kelly and Maurice. Lucas Peter Rodriguez was born on August 31st in Washington DC. Congratulations!
We continue to believe that the “Americas is the best place to feed the world” and as such I want to end this introduction to our newsletter reaffirming our commitment to continue to advance agriculture and better the living conditions of the rural dwellers of the Americas, making an efficient and transparent use of the resources that our country member states put to our disposal. We invite you to join us in this effort and we hope we can find innovative ways to collaborate together.
Sincerely,
Dr. Miguel García-Winder, IICA Representative in the USA, Head of CAESPA
*This post appears in the IICA Delegation in the USA Newsletter – July – August 2016
*The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors and they do not reflect the position of the Institute on the topics presented
