Food & Agriculture Organization Meets To Establish Food Security in Asia
Best Growth Stock – Rising food prices and food security in the Asia-Pacific ministerial meeting focused celebrating the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) starting today in Hanoi.
The 300 delegates from 38 countries participating in the discussions, the Ministers who preside since Thursday, will face the reality that Asia-Pacific has had in the last decades one of the world’s highest economic growth and the time, houses 578 million people malnourished.
Of the 925 million undernourished people worldwide, 62.5 percent live in the Asia-Pacific, mostly in Bangladesh, China, Philippines, India and Indonesia.
In addition, FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecast for 2020 a dramatic increase in the price of basic seeds, including rice (40%), corn (48%), wheat (27%) and oilseeds (36%).
“We must produce more food for a growing population,” said the director for Asia-Pacific FAO, Hiroyuki Konuma, and called for more funding and cooperation among farmers, according to a press release on its intervention.
The executive said that the multilateral organization to achieve the objective must “invest heavily in the agricultural sector” and to allocate capital to improve infrastructure, research, training and management of natural resources.
“Food security will improve if we combine the increased supply and availability of safe and healthy food at affordable prices with education and awareness about nutrition,” said Konuma participants.
Governments in Asia-Pacific region face the problems of climate change, the uncontrolled growth of population and decreasing arable space, a situation that is aggravated by rising food prices and oil.
The price index of the FAO food stood at an average of 215 points in February 2012, ie about 1% (2.4 points) than the revised figure for January, according to the agency.
Vietnamese Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc, during his inaugural speech stressed the importance of the biennial conference and noted that “the importance and urgency of reducing hunger and improving food security when 65 percent of those people around the world living in poverty and hungry live in Asia-Pacific. ”
Three of the four most populous countries are located in this region of the world: China (1,340 million), India (1,171 million) and Indonesia (240 million).
Konuma admitted that “eradicating hunger has become an increasingly complex challenge in the” Asia-Pacific, but noted that “the way to overcome hunger and instability it causes is increasing investment in agriculture and food security homes. ”
This conference organized by FAO in collaboration with the Government of Vietnam offers in its five days an opportunity for farmers, cooperatives, social movements and the private sector can be understood and agree policies with governments and multilateral agencies.
The new director general of FAO, Brazilian José Graziano da Silva, is scheduled to attend the meeting in Hanoi and will release in an Asian conference since he took office in January.
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