Ministers of finance and agriculture from Latin America and the Caribbean will be among the speakers at an international seminar on March 24 in New Orleans on rural development and poverty reduction.

The forum, to be held in the Morial Convention Center, is one of 11 seminars offered in conjunction with the 41st Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Also featured at the conference will be experts from academia, the private sector, international organizations, and nongovernment organizations.

The forum will be inaugurated at 9 a.m. by IDB President Enrique V. Iglesias; Jill Long Thompson, undersecretary of agriculture for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and Torben Brylle of Denmark, ambassador and alternate governor to the IDB and undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The participants will analyze areas such as rural investment, agribusiness, and nonagricultural rural activity that will promote economic development.

The presentations will offer a broad and multisectoral vision of rural development, and they will include the experiences of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and European countries.

The conclusions of the seminar will contribute to the design of a new rural agenda for the IDB.

A proposal will be discussed for the formation of an interagency working group on rural development that will be signed by the president of the IDB; the subdirector of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Gustavo Gordillo; the president of the International Fund for Agriculture Development, Fawzi H. Al-Sutan; the director general of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agricultural, Carlos Aquino; the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, José Antonio Ocampo; and the manager of German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Wolfgang Schmidt.

A field trip has been organized for March 25 in which participants will visit the installations of the Louisiana State University, a small farm, and agribusinesses.