The event was attended by authorities of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG), representatives of producers’ associations, the private sector, international cooperation and legal consultants from the law firm Oyarte & Quintana, who presented the progress of the study being carried out for the design and implementation of the OCAs.

The dialogue began with a contextualization of the situation of agrifood chains in Ecuador. Consultant Christian Marlin explained that despite the existence of various diagnoses on the reality of the chains, sustainable work plans for their development have been minimal and with little implementation. For this reason, he said that “agricultural production chains show weak governance, which affects their capacity for development”.

He believes that this problem can be solved with the construction and implementation of projects with medium and long-term scopes, which guarantee continuous and secure sources of financing. Another challenge facing these systems is the lack of associativity on the part of producers, an aspect that was pointed out by Óscar Torres, undersecretary of Marketing of MAG.

The presentation by the law firm of Oyarte & Quintana began with a comparison of governance mechanisms, based on the experiences of agricultural chains in Colombia and France.

Although the legal and political reality of Ecuador is different from that of the examples analyzed, this vision made it possible to learn about the application of the Organization of Production Chains (OCP) in the Colombian case and the Interprofessional Organizations (OI) in the French case.