In Washington, Director General of IICA and USDA agree to support participation of the agriculture sector in climate negotiations

Washington, D.C., 21 March 2023 (IICA) – In the city of Washington, District of Colombia, Manuel Otero, Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), met with Alexis Taylor, Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), as part of a tight work agenda in the United States.
 
At the meeting, Under Secretary Taylor recognized IICA’s work on the continent, emphasizing aspects such as food health and safety and sanitary and phytosanitary measures related to the foreign trade of food products.
 
In turn, Otero expressed the urgent need for the agriculture sector to play a larger role in climate debates and decisions, a position that Taylor strongly supported, who assumed her position at the USDA last December after being appointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the United States Senate.
 
In this context, Otero recapped the position of the ministers of Agriculture of the Americas as agreed to in an effort coordinated by IICA and shared at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27). At the Home of Sustainable Agriculture of the Americas—a pavilion set up by the Institute along with its public and private sector partners—over 50 conferences were held to share progress made in terms of agriculture in the Hemisphere in favor of climate change mitigation and adaptation.
 
IICA’s Director General believes that the agriculture sector must be a key actor in the upcoming international climate negotiations and expressed the need for the highest possible number of ministers from the area to participate in COP 28 to be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
 
Within this framework, Otero familiarized Under Secretary Taylor with the preparations being made for the upcoming Conference of Ministers of Agriculture – Inter-American Board of Agriculture, which this year will bring together all of the Ministers and Secretaries of Agriculture of the Americas and is the highest governing body of the Institute, emphasizing its connection to the global climate agenda.
 
Under Secretary Taylor and Otero also touched on the subject of gender and the Director General invited Taylor to the Forum of Female Ministers and Deputy Ministers of Agriculture of the Americas, which will meet again this year.

Additionally, at the meeting, Otero anticipated that IICA will launch a hemispheric plan for the comprehensive management of water resources and reiterated the Institute’s support of increasing the use of bio-inputs in agriculture and sustained, coordinated actions in the region to control the bird flu outbreak.

Meetings with the public and private sectors
 
Otero’s agenda in Washington included a visit with Rebecca Bill Chavez, President and CEO of The Dialogue, in which both agreed on the need to dive deeper into the financial, social and environmental dimensions of agriculture and its close relationship to food security, poverty and migration.
 
Along these lines, together with Daniela Stevens, Director of the Energy, Climate Change and Extractive Industries Program at The Dialogue, they began to map out a calendar of joint activities. The Dialogue is a center for debate and research in the field of international relations.

Other top officials with whom the Director General of IICA met while in the United States were Felipe Jaramillo, World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean; Anna Wallenstein, Regional Director of Sustainable Development, World Bank; Diego Arias, Practice Manager, World Bank; and Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr., Director of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).

With Jaramillo, the discussion centered on the fertilizer and water crises affecting the continent. Otero also confirmed the invitation for the World Bank to participate in the Science, Technology and Innovation Week and Digital Agriculture Week organized by IICA.

With the Director of PAHO, an agreement was reached for joint efforts to be made to combat the outbreak of bird flu affecting more than a dozen countries on the continent. The effort coordinated by the two organizations will be under the One Health concept, which recognizes the interdependence of animal, human and plant health and the interconnection with the ecosystems in which they live.

The delegation accompanying the Director General of IICA to Washington D.C. included Lloyd Day, Deputy Director General; Special Advisor Jorge Werthein; and Margaret Zeigler, IICA Representative in the United States.
 
Otero also met with Ambassador Francisco Mora, U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), with whom he discussed topics centered on public policies for agriculture and the importance for the continent of platforms such as that of IICA. 

From the private sector, Otero visited with senior executives from Corteva Agriscience and PepsiCo, and participated in a meeting at CropLife with about 20 U.S. farmers of meat, seeds and grains, with whom he shared information on IICA’s institutional transformation and discussed the need to make progress in forming new, stronger coalitions for farmers and for greater coordination with the public and private sectors and national science, technology and innovation systems.During his stay in Washington, the Director General of IICA named Krysta Harden, current CEO and President of the United States Dairy Export Council (USDEC) and a pioneer in terms of activism in favor of the leading role of women in food production, as a Leader of Rurality of the Americas.

More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int