This year, the highest-level meeting of the hemisphere’s agricultural sector will be taking place in Mexico, organized by that country’s Secretariat of Agriculture and IICA.

An initiative for the countries of the Americas to increase their annual contributions to IICA will be presented to the ministers of agriculture of the region at the meeting they will be holding in Mexico in October.

The Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, stated that the upcoming negotiations on a legal framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol will provide the agricultural sectors of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean with the best opportunity ever to make their voices heard.

The potential impact of agriculture insurance for the farming community needs increased attention.

The Director General of IICA participated in the Forum “Outlook 2012”, organized by the USDA, where he explained that the region’s agriculture requires innovation to fulfill its role as food provider to the world, without over-exploiting its natural resources.

With technical support from IICA, plans of actions have been established in the rice, milk, bean, corn, plantain, beef, potato-onion, cassava-yam and vegetable sectors in an attempt to increase productivity and improve the distribution of income among producers.