COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2018
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meeting of the COMCEC AgricultureWorking Group was held in September 2014 with the theme
of “Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access in the OIC Member Countries.” The COMCEC
AWG gathered its 5th meeting with the theme of “Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries” in March 2015. The sixth
Meeting was held in October 2015 with the theme of “Promoting Agricultural Value Chains in
the OIC Member Countries.”
Moreover, given the importance of food losses in the Member Countries, the COMCEC AWG
devoted its 7th, 8th and 9th Meetings to different dimensions of this subject which are
respectively on-farm food losses, post-harvest food losses and food waste in the OIC Member
Countries.
Food security is one of the most important challenges faced by the governments in the World as
well as in the OIC Member Countries. In this respect, a well-functioning agricultural market
performance is essential to ensure food security in the Member Countries. Given the significance
of this issue, the 10th Meeting of the COMCEC AWGwas held on September 28th, 2017 in Ankara,
Turkey with the theme of “Improving Agricultural Market Performance: Creation and
Development of Market Institutions”. Following this meeting, the 11th Meeting of the AWG was
held on February 22nd, 2018 in Ankara with the theme of “Improving Agricultural Market
Performance: Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems”.
The 12th Meeting of the COMCEC AWG will be held on September 20th, 2018 with the theme of
“Analysis of Agri-Food Trade Structures to Promote Agri-Food Trade Networks among the OIC
Member Countries”.
In each meeting of the AWG, the research report prepared specifically on the theme of the
meeting is considered by the AWG. “COMCEC Agriculture Outlook” reports are prepared and
submitted toWGMeetings. As the outcome of themeeting, theWG comes upwith concrete policy
recommendations. In addition, Proceedings of these Working Group Meetings, which reflect the
outcomes of the Meetings, are published by the CCO, following eachWGMeeting. All the relevant
publications and presentations are available on the COMCEC website (www. and
.
Furthermore, the Member Countries having registered to the AWG have the chance to propose
multilateral cooperation projects within the framework of the COMCEC Project Funding, which
is another important implementation instrument of the Strategy. The projects to be financed
under the COMCEC Project Funding need to serve multilateral cooperation and be designed in
accordance with the objectives and the expected outcomes defined by the Strategy in its
agriculture section. The projects also have important role in realization of the policy
recommendations formulated by the member countries during the AWG meetings.
The1st Project Call under the COMCEC Project Funding was made in September 2013. Within
the framework of the first project call of the COMCEC Project Funding, in agriculture sector, the
project titled “Pakistan Bioremediation Model for Wastewater Treatment and Capacity Building
Program among OIC Countries” proposed by Pakistan was successfully implemented with the
participation of Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh and Turkey in 2014.