Washington, DC, July 25th. The Executive Committee of The Market Information Organization of the Americas (MIOA) met in Washington, DC on July 24 and 25, 2019. “IICA has proudly served as MIOA Technical Secretariat since 2004 and during this time, USDA has contributed well over $2million in support of MIOA”, stated Mari Stull, IICA’s Representative in the United States during her opening remarks. “Nearly twenty years ago, the Market Information Organization of the Americas was created by USDA’s Ag Marketing Service, supported by FAS to support efficient national and international marketing of our agricultural products”
session of the MIOA's Executive Meeting in Washington, DC.
MIOA is a cooperation network comprised of government institutions or those institutions so delegated by the government, whose main functions and goals is the collection, process, analysis and dissemination of information relative to markets and agricultural commodities. The Executive Committee meets three times a year to propose the organization’s strategic orientation and work plan, identifying opportunities for member countries and setting policies and priorities.
“We all owe a debt of gratitude to Terry Long’s vision and extraordinary dedication in making MIOA a reality – and, In IICA’s estimation, a very positive return on that investment. And with your guidance and recommendations, IICA stands ready to support all efforts to grow MIOA as the world leader in the critical area of agricultural markets and information related to those markets”, Mari Stull remarked.
To enable MIOA to better meet the needs of its member countries the Technical Secretariat of MIOA at IICA developed a self-evaluation methodology that was carried out during June-July, 2019. The results will be discussed during this meeting of the Executive Committee in Washington, DC, and will allow the Technical Secretariat to propose and execute new projects for the benefit of the Agricultural Market Information Systems (MIS). In addition, the result of this evaluation will be compared to a baseline in order to measure the MIOA’s impact; identify good practices in the collection, management, analysis and dissemination of market information; and identify opportunities for improvement with the support of the MIOA.
MIOA strengthens the capacities of more than 300 people in the Americas on issues related to price analysis through the IICA virtual platform.