Juan Echanove

Juan Echanove (Madrid, Spain, 1969) has been active in the food security, agriculture, rural development, and climate adaptation sectors for 27 years.

Juan started his career working as a food aid monitor in Croatia, Bosnia, and Cuba; he spent 5 in Central America as chief of party on agriculture programs for the Swedish Development Cooperation, policy advisor for Oxfam International, and consultant for DFID, the Spanish Development Cooperation Agency and UNDP. Later, he coordinated the agriculture programs in West Bank and Gaza.

In 2004 Juan joined the European Union. Based in Manila, he led the establishment of the South East Asia Centre for Biodiversity and he ran the EU Food Security Facility for the Philippines. He was based in the Caucasus from 2009 to 2016, where he successfully managed the agriculture and food safety negotiations for the free trade agreement between Georgia and the EU and coordinated the EU’s agriculture and rural development programming, co-designing the national agriculture strategy and successfully establishing more than 1,500 smallholders’ cooperatives across the country.

In 2015 Juan was awarded by the Prime Minister of Georgia with the Order of the Golden Fleece (the highest State recognition in the country) for his ‘outstanding contribution to the development of agriculture’.

Juan joined CARE in 2016. He was Senior Director for Food and Water Systems until 2022 when he was promoted as Associate Vice President. In this function, Juan leads CARE’s global work on security, resilience, agriculture, livelihoods, nutrition, and WASH/Water.

During his time in CARE, Juan and his team have been able to multiply the impact of CARE work on food and water systems globally, improving the food security and nutrition of 50 million small scale farmers, expanding and diversifying CARE’s food security and agriculture portfolio exponentially, including new corporate partnerships and building various global strategic alliances with FAO, IFAD, WWF, GAIN and other global stakeholders. Juan also coordinated CARE leadership roles in the UNFSS.

Juan has a Master’s Degree in Law, a Master’s Degree in Development Cooperation and a Minor Degree in Anthropology on Amerindian Studies.

Amongst other distinctions, Juan is the Honorary President of the 10,000 members’ Georgians Farmers Association and a Funding Member of the Spanish Development Workers Professional Association. He has authored various articles popularizing Food Security policies in newspapers, magazines and academic papers and he is the author of four books and is a regular contributor on food security and development issues in the Spanish media. Juan is a proud father of three and is currently living with his family in Strasbourg, France.