With the aim of giving visibility to family farming, coordination was carried out in Santiago de Chile for the II Conference of the Expanded Mercosur Committee to be held in Chile on December 5 and 6, within the framework of the 37th Specialized Meeting of Family Agriculture (REAF), under the Pro Tempore Presidency of Uruguay.
The meeting was led by the national director of the Agricultural Development Institute (INDAP), Santiago Rojas; the deputy director of INDAP Pía Alfaro; the technical secretary of the REAF, Lautaro Viscay; and from the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP) of Uruguay, its general director, Fernanda Maldonado, and its deputy director, Mercedes Antía. Also attending the conference were Sebastián Acosta, head(s) of the Development Division of INDAP, as well as members of a commission from FAO Chile, Luiz Beduschi, Policy Officer of the Regional FAO; and Gabriel Layseca, Head of the ODEPA International Relations Department, as well as support professionals from INDAP.
During the meeting, the national director of the National Director of the Agricultural Development Institute, Santiago Rojas, pointed out that “we have internal challenges of making inter-institutional collaborations to promote rural development”; and that, in this same line, it is essential to know “what neighboring countries do to generate regional integration and strengthen the sector”.
“It will allow us to make the Chilean rural world visible and, above all, to put as the central axis of the discussion the issues that concern national peasants today, such as the union of agricultural actors around food security and sovereignty; how we face the consequences of climate change with sustainable and agroecologically based production, and the necessary deepening of the inclusion of women, youth and indigenous peoples”, added Rojas.
“For us, inter-institutional work at the national level and also in regional coordination is also a priority. It allows us to share experiences, the good ones and the bad ones, because one learns a lot from that. And also as a region, in what has to do with specific policies for family farming”, said the general director of MGAP, Fernanda Maldonado.
The REAF Mercosur is a meeting specialized in family farming and its main objective is the construction of public policies to improve the quality of life of agricultural producers in the region. The meeting will take place on December 5 and 6, 2022 in Chile, and during the previous months, there will be workshops to work on the thematic axes from commissions.
