Ministers from the region with the world’s largest net food export meet in Ecuador for an FAO regional conference focused on healthy nutrition, inclusive rural societies and sustainable agriculture.
Quito/Ecuador, Santiago de Chile. Ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean met today to promote healthy diets, inclusive rural development and sustainable and resilient agriculture in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to discuss ways to mitigate the impact of rising food prices and fertilizer use on the region, the world’s largest net exporter of food.
The 37th Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), hosted by the government of Ecuador, will last until April 1, 2022.
The conference is “an opportunity for us to coordinate in a concerted way the protection of food resources, social capital and the economy that depend on agricultural production,” said the President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso.
“The foods you produce and export will affect the diets of hundreds of millions of men, women and children within and beyond the borders of this wonderful country,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu in his opening address to an audience who also attended was the president of Ecuador and ministers from 33 countries in the region.
He commended the region’s ministers and all public and private actors in their agri-food systems for the work they have done to sustain food production and trade during the pandemic. “They must maintain these efforts in all their agri-food systems for the benefit of global food security,” he added.
The Regional Conferences are the governing bodies of FAO, meeting every two years. They provide a forum for members to identify key priority areas of work with FAO and provide guidance on how to effectively implement the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31, in line with the regional specificities of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Director-General noted that the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-2031 provides a “clear roadmap” for the transition to more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for four improvements: better production, better nutrition, better environment and a better Life leaves no one behind.
Pedro Álava, Minister of Agriculture of Ecuador and President of the Regional Conference, outlined his country’s goal to prepare agriculture for the challenges of climate change, including using genome editing technologies to prevent crop diseases from destroying banana production in the country.
The four improvements in the regional context
The priority themes of the regional conference are: sustainable agri-food systems for healthy nutrition for all, prosperous and inclusive rural societies, and sustainable and resilient agriculture.
A new pressing issue that members will raise during the conference is the rise in food and fertilizer prices, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine; The FAO director-general said it is vital for the region as it poses risks to producers, consumers and economic recovery.
“Peace is essential to protect people from hunger!” he said. “I challenge you to identify the key multilateral actions that can be taken to reduce the impact of the crisis. No country is big enough or powerful enough to solve this problem on its own.” QU noted that the FAO has urged all countries to keep global trade in food and fertilizers open.
Accelerating innovation and action in response to rapid increases in fertilizer and other input prices is part of what is meant by “enhanced production,” which can help the region cement its role as the world’s largest net exporter of food . World. Mr. QU noted that Latin America and the Caribbean produced enough calories to feed 1.3 billion people, calling this a tremendous achievement; However, it will not be enough to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to live on the planet by 2050.
Better nutrition is an important issue given the region’s alarming rise in hunger and obesity, added the FAO Director-General, who called for school feeding and social protection programs to be strengthened. He also stressed that 23 countries in the region have already enacted laws and regulations to ban the consumption of ultra-processed foods.
To achieve a better environment, agricultural and food systems must be adapted and made more resilient to the climate crisis and their greenhouse gas emissions reduced, which today account for 45% of the region’s total anthropogenic emissions.
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The fourth improvement — a better life — requires protecting the many families who have been hardest hit by the pandemic and a concerted effort to reduce territorial, gender, ethnic and rural-urban inequalities, QU said.
He added that digitization is a powerful tool that can help drive the four improvements that – along with science and innovation – should be integrated at all levels of agri-food systems and complemented by fair and regulated international trade .
Source. Central American and Caribbean digital newspaper