Dr. Victor Villalobos
Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mexico
Víctor Villalobos is Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Mexico and former General Director of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture. Villalobos was Undersecretary for the Secretariat of Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries, and Undersecretary for the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food. He was the first Executive Secretary of the Intersecretarial Commission for Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms, and one of the founders of the North American Biotechnology Initiative. He has been Director of the Agriculture Division in the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center, and Chief Biotechnology Officer at FAO-Rome where he coordinated projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and holds a Master’s degree of Sciences in Plant Genetics from the Graduate College of Chapingo and Bachelor’s Degree in Agronomy and from the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo.