FAO Says Food Security is linked to Climate Change

As Foreign Minister Courtenay just shared, one of the topics dealt with is food security. Notably, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and SICA signed a Framework Cooperation Agreement during the SICA meeting in Placencia. The main objective is to support the transformation of agri-food systems in countries with little rainfall. The agreement enhances joint efforts between F.A.O. and SICA to promote economic, social, environmental, and cultural determinants of food and nutritional security in SICA member countries. The F.A.O.-SICA agreement serves as a model for regional cooperation and demonstrates the collective strength and commitment of the participating organizations to address the complex challenges facing the agricultural sector and the environment in the SICA region. News Five asked the Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Mario Lubetkin about the role his office played in the discussions.

Mario Lubetkin, Assistant Director General, FAO

Mario Lubetkin

“SICA is our partner and we are partner of SICA, and there are some things that just we discussed yesterday when we signed this agreement in which no one alone can resolve the problem of public security. If we cannot put all together all of the capacity organizations like SICA that represent many countries in the region, FAO, that represent 184 countries all over the world need to work together specifically to try to guarantee food security in a new scenario in which now food security is not only the plate of food for the day, but link it with climate change, link it with migration, link it with health because we cannot talk about food security without talk about nutrition. There are links between we – it’s linked logically about economic scenario because people with hunger cannot guarantee stability in the country. So, all this point is a new approach about something that is crucially we are thinking in the future. Just for this, we are talking about agri-food transformation. So, we need to think food security when we are starting the process to try to plant. When we are using the water, when we need to support the farmers from the economic point of view when we need to give them, internal and external market to work about that. When we are thinking about the relation between seeds and quality of that. So all the elements we need to think together and in this region, logically the most two important point that we need to link is climate change and food security.”