MINUTES of General Meetings of
International Co-operative Agricultural Organisation (ICAO)
Rio de Janeiro, 4 December 2000


Welcome
The meeting was opened by President of ICAO, Won Churll-Hee, who welcomed the members and guests. Forty delegates and observers from fifteen countries participated in the meeting.

  1. Secretary General Report
    Lee Shil-Kwan, Secretary General, reported ICAO activities since last meeting in Quebec City under following categories:
    1. Membership: currently 49 members from 35 countries, e.g. 11 members from Africa, 7 from Americas, 14 from Asia, and 17 from Europe.
    2. Finance: The Secretary reported that the cash balance as of 30 October was CHF90,230.25.
    3. NACF financial contribution to ICAO: The Secretary thanks NACF, Korea for the financial contribution of USD 30,000 to ICAO
    4. Major Activities since Quebec:
      1. ICAO Statement on WTO negotiation in Agriculture - ICAO President and ICA President participated in WTO Seattle Ministerial Meeting in November 1999. ICAO issued the Statement on the WTO Negotiations in Agriculture and presented it to WTO Secretary.
      2. Roberto Rodrigues (ICA President), Hasle Nielsen (Vice President, ICAO), Mohamed Idris (Vice President, ICAO), and Lee Shil Kwan (Secretary General, ICAO) participated in UN CSD-8 meeting in New York last April
      3. The 2nd ICAO/NACF Workshop in Seoul was organised from 28 Aug. to 3 Sept. 2000. All local cost was supported by NACF, Korea.
      4. ICAO discussion paper, Agricultural cooperatives in the transitional cooperatives? was distributed to the participants.
  1. New Membership
    Secretary reported that The National Ko-op Mart Federation, the Republic of the Philippines applied to the ICAO membership during the year. The application was approved unanimously.
  1. Special Proposal of ICA Europe
    Gabriella Sozanski, ICA Regional Director for Europe proposed Tri-Organisation collaboration between COGECA, ICA Europe and ICAO. If possible, joint international workshop would start next year with first concern on European agriculture.
    H. Nielsen commented it'd be good to work together with CEGECA, which is a strong structure in organising all European agricultural organisations.
  1. Introduction of co-operatives in Brazil
    Dejandir Dalpasquale, President of OCB, presented general aspects of Brazilian agriculture and agricultural co-operatives.
  1. Country Report
    Sven Holmstr? (LRF, Sweden), Hiroshi Usui (JA-Zenchu), Holger Hasle Nielsen (FDC, Denmark), and Kumar Jackar (IFFCO, India) presented or introduced their co-operatives' activities.
  1. Plans for 2001
    Secretary General reported future plans of ICAO next year: Among is General meeting in Seoul 15, October 2001 and subsequent Seminar on ?i>Global Challenge of Food Security in the 21st Century? The 3rd ICAO/NACF Workshop would be organised either in Seoul or some place of Europe in the first half of the year.
  1. Special Report on .coop
    Paul Hazen, President of NCBA, was invited to introduce newly approved top-level domain, .coop. As ICANN selected .coop with other 6 Top Level Domains(TLD) recently among 108 applications, it'll increase to give consumers uniqueness of cooperativism and we can see it near future probably summer of next year.
  1. Closing
    As there were no other issue, the president closed the meeting with thanks to all participants.