Annual Meeting 2003
The 39th Annual Meeting of
The Association for International Agriculture 
and Rural Development

"On Renewing Commitment to International Agriculture and Rural Development"
Speakers and Panelists

Ruben G. Echeverria
Inter-American Development Bank

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Ruben EcheverrÌa studied agriculture in Uruguay and in the United States during the 1970s. He worked on a small farm in Minnesota for two years. He has worked on diverse activities linked to Latin American rural development for the past 30 years. His first professional position was with Uruguay's Land Reform Institute. He earned a Masters and Doctorate in agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota. He was a researcher at ISNAR, an international agricultural research center headquartered in Holland dedicated to strengthening agricultural technology policies, organization and management in developing countries. From there, he worked in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Currently he is the Chief of the Rural Development Unit in the Sustainable Development Department at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington, DC. At IDB he has collaborated in: the preparation of loans to promote agricultural development in the region; the preparation of Bank strategies to reduce rural poverty and to develop the food and agriculture sector; the creation of the Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO); and the creation of an inter-agency working group for rural development to improve services which these agencies and IDB provide to the region's countries.