ISAM has had the pleasure of attending the annual IFAMA conference hosted by EARTH University and INCAE, where ISAM’s team resulted in the winner of the competition.
IFAMA, the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, every year organizes a Conference about global Agribusiness, and this year it was held in Costa Rica.
Here, 300 attendees from 45 countries representing academic institutions, agribusinesses, governments, and NGOs, came to participate in a competition with real case studies, and our CEO, Germán Fernandez, and three of our MIAM students had the privilege of representing our school.
IFAMA’s global Agribusiness competition
The conference started with a dynamic and informative symposium touching on topics as relevant as Circular Economy, Agribusiness, Strategy, Governing Sustainability and Value Chain Traceability. Also, research papers from universities around the world were presented and discussed.
Our team competed in the International Student Case Competition for the first time and it was formed by MIAM 2021 students: Michelle Marais (South Africa), Paul Giesebrecht (Germany) and Lilia Paz (Honduras) and they were joined by 21 other teams from around the world and went through 3 days of the competition.
During this competition, they competed in 3 rounds. For the first two rounds, they were presented with a business case about Shared-X and given 4 hours to crack the case and present their strategy before a panel of judges. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session and, in the final round, they presented at the forum of IFAMA and combined their strategies from the previous two rounds.
Afterwards, there was a thought-provoking and engaging Forum where industry leaders from around the world discussed the latest challenges, technologies and practices.
The forum hosted many panel discussions which provided insights into the strategies of governments, retailers, producers, and stakeholders.
Valuable networking opportunities were also facilitated by IFAMA, where deep, meaningful one-on-one discussions took place, which is a unique opportunity to get advice from industry leaders. Our students had a wonderful time with like-minded peers and are looking forward to meeting everyone at the next IFAMA in New Zealand in 2023.
The conference could not have ended any better than with a Presidential Banquet hosted by INCAE business school, where our team was announced as the winners of the 2022 Student Case Competition in the graduate category. In our first year competing, we are delighted that ISAM was able to kick it off with a bang. We are only excited to see what the future holds for ISAM at this annual conference.
IFAMA’s competition is an incredible experience where students are awarded an opportunity to showcase their talents. Thanks to Shared-X and Bayer for facilitating and sponsoring the student competition.
