The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply of Brazil and Chair of the Inter-American Board of Agriculture (IABA), Tereza Cristina, called for a meeting to be held this Wednesday.
San Jose, 15 March 2022 (IICA) – The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply of Brazil and Chair of the Inter-American Board of Agriculture (IABA), Tereza Cristina, called for a meeting to be held this Wednesday among ministers and senior officials of the agriculture sector in the 34 countries of the Americas; the Director General of FAO, Qu Dongyu; and the Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Manuel Otero.
The meeting will address the crisis unleashed by the war in Eastern Europe, which has affected the markets of food commodities, especially wheat, energy and trade in fertilizers, which are key inputs for food production.
“The world is experiencing particularly challenging circumstances (…) The disruption of global value chains has resulted in higher prices for food and inputs, especially fertilizers, which jeopardizes the economic sustainability of agricultural activities and threatens food security, not only in our region but in the entire planet as well”, explained Minister Tereza Cristina in her invitation to the meeting.
The Inter-American Board of Agriculture (IABA) brings together the 34 countries of the Americas, a key region for global food security.
Within this new context, the meeting will also provide a renewed platform for cooperation among countries of the Americas, which, as expressed by Brazil, are eager to follow up on the region’s successful actions in preparation for last year’s UN Food Systems Summit, during which the 34 countries of the Americas presented a joint position.
Also present at the ministerial meeting, which will be attended by high-level authorities of FAO and IICA, will be the former Minister of Agriculture of Rwanda, Agnes Kalibata, who was the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Food Systems Summit and is the current President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
In recent weeks, Minister Tereza Cristina has been voicing her concern regarding sanctions that affect the exportation of fertilizers, of which Russia is a major global supplier. She has also described the imposition of unilateral sanctions on trade in fertilizers as a “threat to global food security”.
Therefore, she stated that the purpose of the meeting is “to foster frank, open dialogue on the main challenges facing the agriculture sector of countries of the Americas within the current economic and geopolitical context in the aftermath of the pandemic”.
More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int
