IICA Director General Muhammad Ibrahim and FEPALE Secretary General Ariel Londinsky held a high-level technical meeting at IICA headquarters in San José to deepen coordination between the two organizations and consolidate strategic initiatives aimed at strengthening the competitive and sustainable development of the regional dairy sector.
During the meeting, they discussed technical progress on the project linked to the Regional Agenda for Sustainable Development of the Dairy Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, a joint initiative of FEPALE, IICA, CAF-Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Dairy Sustainability Framework (DSF). The project seeks to promote regional mechanisms for technical cooperation, productive sustainability, climate resilience, and institutional capacity building, as well as to coordinate actions and report progress according to the DSF methodology.
Ibrahim and Londinsky also examined opportunities for IICA technical support in implementing the Mercosur-European Union Association Agreement, especially regarding aspects related to dairy product export and import quotas, sanitary and phytosanitary standards, designations of origin, and access to international markets.
Another central focus was consolidating cooperation to strengthen the availability of dairy sector statistics, through technical coordination between the FEPALE Dairy Sector Observatory and the IICA Observatory of Public Policies for Agrifood Systems (OPSAa), with the aim of providing strategic information for decision-making, public policy formulation, and monitoring of sectoral indicators.
The institutions also advanced in coordinating joint initiatives with the Southern Agricultural Council (CAS) and IICA national representations, aiming to promote an integrated regional agenda that contributes to territorial development, technological innovation, and sustainability of dairy chains.
As next steps, they agreed to hold a High-Level Technical Discussion Forum IICA-FEPALE-CAF in the last quarter of the year, focused on strategic challenges and opportunities for sustainable transformation of the sector. Cooperation will also be promoted within the framework of the 7th Pan-American Meeting of Young Dairy Farmers, scheduled for 2027 in Chile, a FEPALE initiative to strengthen generational integration, youth leadership, and innovation in production systems.
Finally, they assessed the possible participation of the institutions and actors involved in the Regional Agenda at the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP), to be held in Turkey, as a strategic space to position the Latin American dairy sector's commitment to climate action, sustainability, and food security.