COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2016
48
Increasing Agricultural Productivity." Furthermore, the third meeting Agriculture WG was held
on April 3rd, 2014 in Ankara with the theme of “Improving the Statistical Capacity of the
Agriculture Sector in the OIC Member Countries”. After that, fourth meeting of the COMCEC
Agriculture Working Group was held on September 25th, 2014 with the theme of “Facilitating
Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access in the OIC Member Countries.” Agriculture Working
Group gathered its fifth meeting with the theme of “Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries” on March 5
th
, 2015 in
Ankara, Turkey. Last year, the 6
th
Meeting of the Agriculture Working Group was held 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 has devoted its three meetings to different dimensions of this subject namely: On-Farm
Food Losses, Post-Harvest Losses and Food Waste in the OIC Member Countries. In this
respect, the 7th Meeting of the Agriculture WG was held on March 3rd, 2016 with the theme of
“Reducing On-Farm Food Losses in the OIC Member Countries”.
Furthermore, the member countries having registered to the Agriculture Working
Group 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 first 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, the project titled
“Pakistan Bioremediation Model for Wastewater Treatment and Capacity Building Program
among OIC Countries” proposed by Pakistan was implemented successfully and completed in
December 2014. Purpose of the project was to develop capacity for effective biological
treatment and management of wastewater in five OIC countries namely Pakistan, Afghanistan,
United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh and Turkey.
Moreover, the second Project Call was made in September 2014 and within this
framework, four projects were implemented successfully. These projects were submitted from
Chad, Indonesia, Surinam and Turkey. Project titles and brief information about the projects
implemented in 2015 are as follows;
Chad implemented a project on “Support to the Agricultural Training Centers” with the
participation of Burkina Faso and Turkey. The project aimed at developing capacities
of young rural farmers and experts working in agricultural training centers.
The project titled “Improving the income of small and medium scale farmers in the OIC
Member States through Integrated Farming System” was implemented by Indonesia
with three partner countries namely, Sudan, Gambia and Egypt. The purpose of the
project is to enhance the capacity of the small and medium scale farmers in partner
countries through an integrated farming system.