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The IICA Representative in Argentina, Víctor Arrúa, pictured during the presentation of the program. To his left, the Governor of La Rioja, Luis Beder Herrera.

IICA delivers proposal for development activities in the Argentine province of La Rioja

The provincial governor was delighted to receive the document presented to him by the IICA Representative.

On 11 February, the Governor of the Argentine province of La Rioja, Luis Beder Herrera, received from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) the document detailing a program designed to improve the living standards of goat farmers and their families, and enhance the competitiveness of the goat value-chain in northern and southern Los Llanos.

The Institute’s Representative in Argentina, Víctor Arrúa, was responsible for the ceremony, which took place at the Governor’s official residence. Mr. Arrúa was accompanied by several IICA specialists. Governor Beder Herrera was joined by the secretaries of livestock, agriculture and industry and investment promotion, and the province’s member of Congress. Representatives of the Unit for Rural Change, of Argentina’s MAGyP, also took part.

Last year the Governor contacted IICA to explore the possibility of developing an integrated development plan for the goat value-chain in La Rioja. The Institute assigned the task to a hemispheric, regional and national multidisciplinary team of specialists.

Accepting the document, the Governor emphasized that the strategic nature of the proposal made it a policy tool for an important sector in the province, with short-, medium- and long-term actions that would have a positive impact on the quality of life of the inhabitants of Los Llanos.

He thanked IICA for acting swiftly to develop the proposal in coordination with the Provincial Agricultural Services Program (PROSAP) and said he would ask the Minister of the MAGyP to ensure that the Institute supported the formulation of the corresponding feasibility study.

The program

The area that will benefit from the program is among those with the highest proportion of unmet basic needs. Los Llanos is part of the province of La Rioja, in the west-central region of Argentina. It has a surface area of 50,000 square kilometers and a population of over 50,000 people.

The principal economic activity in these arid plains is goat and cattle raising.

The development of the goat chain, in particular, is made all the more difficult by aspects such as environmental degradation with loss of biodiversity; rapidly advancing desertification; extremely limited water resources; a lack of technology; and, organizational underdevelopment.

Other constraints include insufficient herd management, inadequate facilities for efficient sanitary and nutritional management, lack of infrastructure for water management and highly deteriorated pastureland.

Producers depend heavily on middlemen and are largely unaware of consumer preferences, while there is no institutional framework to encourage producers to get organized or leverage in the chain.

To address this situation, the program aims to raise the living standards of goat producers and their families in a sustainable way and enhance the competitiveness of the goat value-chain, adopting an integrating territorial vision.

The program’s four components are as follows:

Institutional modernization and public policies
Sustainable production, productivity and markets of the goat value-chain
Strategic partnerships and support for the development of the capabilities of private and civil society organizations
Sustainable development strategy for the territory of Los Llanos.

The cost of the first stage of the program, spread over three years, is put at US$23.5 million.

For more information, contact
victor.arrua@iica.int

IICA Connection is the electronic bulletin of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture. Writing and production: Office of Public Information and Institutional Image.
iicaconexion@iica.int

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