In its first quarterly meeting, the entity that leads the design of a standard for the sector’s agribusiness, discussed the progress of the project and set its next short-term actions.
On Wednesday, October 19, at the offices of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, IICA, the first session of the Executive Committee in charge of the “Design of a Sustainability Standard for the Agroindustrial Sector of Dried Plums” was held. His executor; The Trade Association of Processors and Exporters of Dry Plums of Chile (Chileprunes) was present with Federico Montes and Agustín Marín, members of the board of directors, and its executive director, Pedro Acuña, manager of the project.
The full Committee was attended by Fernando Barrera, Karina Orellana and Francisca Sepúlveda, from IICA. Johanna Guzmán and Dominique Naves from the Agency for Sustainability and Climate Change (ASSC). And Daniela Acuña from the Office of Agrarian Studies and Policies (ODEPA).
The executive board discussed the progress of the project in its first quarter of execution, presented its governance structure; outlined a schedule for its next short-term actions and delved into the importance of APLs (clean production actions that measure social benefits and greenhouse gas reductions)
Since the execution of the project lasts for 28 months and seeks to validate the instrument, identify gaps in the industry and reduce them by virtue of the sustainability standard, to deliver an international certification to companies in the sector; One of the advances achieved in this first quarter is the formation of specific work committees to consolidate said objectives.
A Survey and Benchmarking Instrument
The current execution of the diagnosis, through a survey, is in the hands of 635 national and international actors and will allow establishing the gaps to be overcome. It is considered a worldwide benchmark as research, to carry out actions learned from the references studied. After that comes a massive training process for all the relevant actors and thus implement the standard in a homogeneous manner in the national industry.
Some indicators consulted in the survey: quality; environment; social ethics and management ethics. Each area asks for interesting variables to analyze. Example; When consulting about the process of drying plums, according to those surveyed, “energy use” is more important than “water use”, which, without a doubt, provides criteria and guidelines for action to the executors of the project.
To reach more customers, distributors, marketing chains and importers of the international network. it has the support of the Aggregates Network through ProChile. In the words of Pedro Acuña, project manager and executive director of Chileprunes; “The interest and recognition that we seek is to make a good -match- between the interests of consumers and the offer that we can show, to overcome that -gap- that we still have in the survey.”
Finally, the Agency for Sustainability and Climate Change (ASSC) made a proposal for a “Form of Manifestation of Interest” to present to the relevant actors interested in joining the project and left the door open for the Executive Committee to decide which entities will participate in the project. Clean Production Agreement, mentioning PASO as a possible sponsor.
