Inter-American Institute for Corporation on Agriculture (IICA) Director General Victor Villalobos is urging the member countries to help strengthen the entity’s finances to fund agricultural innovation in the Americas.
IICA has proved the benefits of its methods, which is a major reason to invest in the association, according to Jose Apulche, the deputy minister of natural resources in Belize.
“Overcoming the current difficulties and allocating more resources to cooperation requires that the institute be relaunched; this means adapting it to current times, which demands a different way of dealing with agriculture’s challenges,” Villalobos said at the meeting of the Executive Committee of IICA, which began on July 15 in Costa Rica and will end today.
Bryce Quick, chief operating officer of the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, agreed with Apulche saying, “The institute has evolved and it is necessary to define how we are going to support it. I believe that in order to face the challenges of the agricultural sector, we will need a strong organization to carry out the work we know is critical for our countries.”
One major project the institute is taking on is developing the Energy and Environment Partnership (EEP) in the Andean Region, which has benefited 133 rural communities through the implementation of technologies based on renewable energies that are useful for improving production and living conditions.
