Costa Rica will be the site of the “2011 Meeting of Ministers of Agriculture of the Americas,” which is the most important meeting on agriculture held at the hemispheric level and involves the Ministers of Agriculture of 34 countries of the Americas.

Addressing the Special Advisory Commission on Management Issues (SACMI), comprising representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States of America, the Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Victor M. Villalobos, announced that the ministerial meeting would be held on October 19-21 at IICA Headquarters, in San Jose, Costa Rica.

The Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Víctor M. Villalobos, told a meeting of the staff of the Institute’s Office in Mexico that 2011 would be “a positive year for IICA.”

His opinion is based on a series of meetings he held in the Southern Cone, Andean and Central American countries, the United States and, most recently, Mexico. “It will be a good year because we are focusing once again on technical cooperation, our forte, which gives us a clear leadership in the hemisphere,” Villalobos said.