Field Trip to Paris - OECD, CIRAD, INRA, FNSEA

During the third week of October, a fieldtrip to Paris was organized by the chair of Agricultural Policy from the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development. A group of 20 Master and PhD students took part of the excursion.





The topic of this excursion was the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2013 and its impacts on trade and environment. In order to achieve the objective, the students visited relevant institutions on this matter as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development - OECD, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and the National Federation of Farmers' Unions (FSNEA).





The role of these organizations on the development of the agricultural policies, the political trends regarding the future of the European agriculture and the expectations after the reform were discussed. The second topic of the excursion was the agricultural trade between the European Union and Latin-American which was focused on identifying the main barriers for trade with respect to trade policies.





This was a good opportunity for the IARD students to get information for their thesis and to have a clearer picture of the job prospects after completing the study program. They also have the possibility to know a beautiful city, such as Paris and get along with students from different semesters of the program.

"The Paris excursion was an excellent opportunity to broaden our perspective on agricultural policy. Also we got to know some of the EU institutions that play an important role in either evaluating policies or that are affected by them. Academically the trip was totally worth it, and also on the personal level (getting to know other students and Paris)" (Andrea Juarez, Honduras).

"The visit meant a lot more than just visiting importants organizations; it gave us an overview about CAP. We were able to interact with the main actors in Paris, whom exposed their cientific and vivencial points of view. We gained an understanding that it was more than plain theory, but also a way of backing up our analysis of policies" (Pamela Velasco, Bolivia).