Azerbaijan, IFAD explore future agricultural cooperation amid COP29 talks

Azerbaijan’s Minister of Agriculture Majnun Mammadov has discussed with President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Alvaro Lario to examine future avenues for cooperation in agriculture.

According to the Ministry's Public Relations Department, both parties expressed strong interest in building upon their successful partnership in the sector, Caliber.Az reports per local media.

Mammadov underscored Azerbaijan’s commitment to global environmental initiatives, including the ongoing 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), which Azerbaijan is presently hosting.

He conveyed Azerbaijan’s eagerness to engage in international partnerships to address global challenges, particularly with IFAD as a specialised UN institution.

For his part, the IFAD president outlined his organisation’s ongoing agricultural projects around the world, presenting areas where IFAD and Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Agriculture could collaborate further. He stressed the importance of IFAD’s partnership with Azerbaijan in advancing agricultural development.

The meeting highlighted the significance of current joint projects and examined ways to implement Azerbaijan’s new agricultural strategy. Key areas of cooperation identified included enhancing productivity in the agricultural sector, supporting small-scale farmers, ensuring food security, safeguarding natural resources and environmental balance, and embracing digital transformation in agri-food systems.

Additionally, the two sides discussed strategies to boost Azerbaijan’s export potential by aligning with international food production and processing standards. They also explored possibilities for educational and training programmes, research initiatives, and developing a sustainable agricultural framework to promote rural development.

The meeting concluded with a reaffirmed commitment to deepen agricultural cooperation and support Azerbaijan’s goals for sustainable growth.

To recap, over the past decade, Azerbaijan has made progress in increasing agricultural productivity: some fifty agro-parks have been created, including large grain and greenhouse farms and some of these clusters have established raw material processing and packaging alongside production. Projects to digitise the agricultural sector are also being implemented, industry clusters are being created, the system of leasing agricultural equipment has been reformed and transparency in subsidies has been ensured.

In recent years, the country has been very active in introducing economical irrigation systems. Soon, it is planned to increase the area under modern irrigation solutions from 50,000 to 200,000 hectares. All these measures have had a positive impact on the competitiveness and supply of local agricultural products, both fresh and processed, to foreign markets.

Moreover, Azerbaijan has achieved geographical and nomenclature diversification of exports, supplying 326 types of agricultural products to 88 countries of the world.

To develop this trend, it is necessary to move from one-off trade operations to export deliveries under long-term contracts, to brand national agricultural products and, most importantly, to increase the share of processed and packaged products in foreign trade.

By Khagan Isayev