Rural Champions

Mirna Ortiz is the Administrative and Financial Assistant Director of  ASOPROPIMOPLA, an associative company of small pineapple producers that has commercial agreements with the local market, supermarkets nationally and internationally as exporters of fruit.    

Created by young people from the province of Monte Plata and other parts of the country, ASOPROPIMOPLA brings together 340 members, 33% women and 80% young people with the aim of producing pineapples of excellent quality and taste, so that this fruit becomes the flagship of the local economy and contribute to the development of the province.  

With the support of the Dominican government and Non-Governmental Organisations, they have initiated the transformation of the pineapple sector, generating a wide variety of economic options for the generation of 200 permanent jobs and more than 100 temporary jobs , offering possibilities to improve the quality of life of the community.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF ASOPROPIMOPLA

• More than 500 hectares of MD-2 pineapple cultivation, in production lots, with weekly sowing and harvesting schedules with Global GAP certification;
• 40 commercial partners, inserting the products in an effective and competitive way at national and export level;
• 1 fruit packing plant and traceability strategies to offer a better quality in the final product;
• 1 systematised management plan aimed at improving administrative and financial processes, young people have the opportunity to make a significant contribution to business development.

• Ability to encourage the talent and potential of young people to grow in the areas of administrative management, accounting and auditing processes.
• Design of administrative procedures in accordance with the standards required in agribusiness and national and international markets.
• Development and application of business plans, projections and costs applied to rural productive and entrepreneurial projects.
• Implementation of planning and management strategies to achieve short, medium and long term business objectives.
• Modern administrative practices to systematise and monitor production processes, accounting and legal issues, for commercial operation in markets.

• Design and implementation of simple, practical and executable administrative and financial procedures for rural enterprises seeking to operate in national and international markets.
• Adapt the use of computerised accounting, production and cost measurement systems for small agricultural enterprises.
• Development of teamwork strategies and training programmes for producers and workers, orienting them towards continuous improvement in each area of the company's work.
• Active listening to the team's recommendations to improve processes, optimise resources, simplify tasks and develop solutions to reduce operational costs.
• Creation of synergy between workers and key actors in the activities, enabling the development of capacities to plan field activities.
• Transparency in the issuing of financial statements, reports, cost analysis with the company's partners.

• Digitalise manual systems for administration, accounting and on-farm production monitoring plan.
• Formalisation of the association's economic activities to comply with legal and regulatory requirements (employee insurance, electronic and bank payroll).
• Digitalisation of the manual processes of registration and supervision of commercial and operational information of the processes in the field, post-harvest, packing and marketing of fruit.
• Auditing processes in the different areas of the company.