This paper provides a kind of memoir of the fifteen-year history of IFAD’s Regional Program for Mercosur. Its pages and headings contain matters related to the context of the region and the countries it comprises; to its changes, to a description of and to the role played by the various political, social and economic stakeholders in an increasingly broad and geographically extended region; to the ideological shifts that the governments in the region underwent between 2003 and 2006 and to the political willingness to use dialogue as a tool to generate more and better public policies; to the Program’s work methodology as a facilitator of dialogue; to the commitment expressed in the continuity, confidence and stability of its actions, as shown by IFAD and expressed though the resources invested jointly with the governments over these fifteen years; and, finally, to the increasing public and political visibility of family farming as one of the principal drivers of rural development and the fight against the root causes of rural poverty.