The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Spanish Trust Fund announced that institutions in Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Bolivia were the winners of the third call for proposals of the Better Conditions for Productivity (MAP) on the topic of new financial instruments for the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The four winning projects will improve risk management in the agricultural sector, help develop new financial instruments to mitigate food security risks, improve income stability, and promote productive investments.

This MAP initiative is intended to finance projects and research studies to improve financial and private sector development policies in the region.

The winners will be presented formally on Monday, September 24 during an IDB conference Risk Management in Agricultural Finance: Building more inclusive and secure markets, which will examine new approaches for managing agricultural risks. Interested in attending the conference can register or participate in live coverage.

Winners will receive prizes ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 euros.

Awarded Projects

• Technology Guarantee Program: “How to improve the productivity of maize in Mexico” – The Mexican institution Fidecomisos Instituidos en Relación a la Agricultura (FIRA), in collaboration with the MIT Poverty Action LAB, will undertake and evaluation an innovative program combining investment financing, technical assistance for technological change and a basic income guarantee in order to increase maize smallholders productive capacities in Mexico.
• Parametric Insurance Design: Drought coverage for pastures in Chile – The Spanish institutions Entidad Estatal de Seguros Agrarios (ENESA), with the collaboration of the Comité del Seguro Agrícola de Chile (COMSA), Agrupación Española de Entidades Aseguradoras, S.A. (AGROSEGURO) and the Laboratorio de teledetección de la Universidad de Valladolid will establish a system of protection against drought in pastures in two regions of Chile designing a parametric index insurance.

Awarded Research

• Agricultural Price Volatility and Rural Bank Portfolios in Colombia – The Economic Department of the Rosario University in Colombia, Facultad de Economía (Universidad del Rosario), in collaboration with the Banco Agrario will develop a rural bank portfolio analysis model in order to estimate the effects of price volatility and weather events on loss probabilities and design hedging instruments and strategies.
• Designing an Agricultural Insurance Weather Index in Bolivia – The Bolivian institution Centro de Investigaciones Económicas y Empresariales (CIEE) will develop, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional de Seguro Agrícola, weather index insurance evaluated using parametric yield to provide coverage to farmers in the country’s poorest municipalities.