After the opening of this forum, the Minister of Agriculture of the Isthmus, Augusto Valderrama, in statements to Prensa Latina, thanked the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for their willingness to share experiences of leading nations in this field, such as Brazil. .
FAO’s assistance is vital to the government’s efforts to meet the basic needs of the population, especially the most vulnerable, and to ensure food sovereignty and security, he said.
Valderrama asked its experts to work with the FAO to accelerate the pace so that satellite observation projects, soil studies, water management and the analysis of statistical variables are put into action in order for Panama to perfect the timing and location of the various planting and harvesting cycles.
He emphasized that this innovative tool for agricultural zoning allows to visualize the behavior of climate and soils in order to take government measures and funding to use technology to make our agriculture a resilient and nature-friendly sector, he noted.
In this first training workshop on the climate risk agricultural zoning tool, specialist Joao da Silva Valderrama explained the scope of the studies carried out by the Brazilian agricultural research company in the South American giant.
For his part, the FAO Subregional Coordinator for Mesoamerica, Adoniram Sanches, explained to this news outlet that the purpose of the meeting was to carry out a review of the Brazilian experience and its practical application in the areas of the Central American Dry Corridor and the dry areas of the Dominican Republic. .
Sánches stressed the need to increase the countries of the region’s capacity to plan and monitor the use and sustainable management of available natural resources.
This exercise, he said, made it possible to estimate the probabilities of success for each crop and geographic zone, after crossing the historical series of climate data, the soil texture maps, the cycles and calendars of the crops and their varieties.
Fostering South-South cooperation is key to moving forward in finding common solutions to countries’ common challenges, Sánches said.
The Central American Dry Corridor is an ecologically sensitive area with high rates of poverty and food insecurity.
According to official data, nearly 50 percent of Central America’s nearly two million small producers of staple grains live in this region, and the majority engage in subsistence agriculture.
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