Guyana moving towards safer, stronger, more equitable food system
Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha
Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha

AS countries around the world continue to recover from the crippling effects of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Ministry of Agriculture is set to host a food systems dialogue in the coming week.
Subject Minister Zulfikar Mustapha, on Friday, during a telephone interview, informed the Guyana Chronicle that the dialogue will be held with a number of stakeholders from the various sub-agencies in the ministry, other Government ministries and members of the private sector in preparation for the first ever United Nations Food Systems Summit which is set to be held in New York in September.
“This dialogue is to have various stakeholders giving their views, so that when we go to the UN summit we can go in one collective view about food security in Guyana and the Caribbean,” the minister said.

According to Minister Mustapha, the milestone summit will be based on the input of people all over the world to identify sustainable solutions for the future of food.
He further stated that the dialogue will provide a platform for a lively and constructive discussion on how to make the food system across all the regions in Guyana safer, stronger, and more equitable.
The primary topics that will be discussed are: The global status of agri-food systems and implications for Guyana; developing pathways towards sustainable food systems and the perspective from the private sector.
Participants will be expected to agree on a number of ways that Guyana’s food system can be strengthened. The Ministry of Agriculture will afterwards submit the outcomes of the dialogue to the organisers of the UN Food Systems Summit.

The information will be used to feed into the summit’s five priority action tracks, which are: ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all; shift to sustainable consumption patterns; boost nature positive production; advance equitable livelihoods; and build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress.
According to the United Nations in a press release, the summit will see Secretary-General António Guterres convening the event which will see the launch of bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 sustainable development goals ( SDGs), each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems. The press release further stated that the summit will awaken the world to the fact that “we all must work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about food.” “It is a summit for everyone, everywhere – a people’s summit. It is also a solutions summit that will require everyone to take action to transform the world’s food systems. Member States and Independent Summit Dialogues are both an important avenue for citizen engagement and a key part of the summit process,” the UN stated.

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