AGRICULTURE Minister Zulfikar Mustapha has been elected to serve as Vice-Chairman of the 37th Session of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)’s Regional Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean (LARC) that is being held in Quito, Ecuador,

At the five-day conference which opened on Monday, those representing the 33 member states will be establishing the regional priorities of the organisation for the next biennium.

They are expected to discuss the adapting and localising of the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-2031 to the conditions of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Additionally, the participating countries will analyse the work done by the FAO in the previous two years in the region and agree on recommendations for initiatives and priorities that will guide the organisation’s work during the 2022-2023 period.

Minister Mustpaha in a previous interview with this publication had disclosed his plans to address a number of issues in relation to food production in the region.

“At this conference, a number of issues will be discussed there – food production, looking at the measures to improve food production – because with the pandemic for the last two years and now with the war in Russia and Ukraine, the FAO predicted that we may have a shortfall [of] about 20-30 per cent in food production,” the minister said.

At the conference, Minister Mustapha will have the opportunity to share Guyana’s vision, while discussing technological, institutional and organisational innovations with other Heads of Government to find joint solutions to the challenges associated with food, agriculture, and climate change.

“This conference here will help to brainstorm ways and means on how we can improve as [a] region, how we can ramp up food production and at the same time make sure that everybody gets enough food to eat for the next few years,” he added.

During the first two days of the conference, there will be meetings involving high-level authorities. The officials will be presenting and analyzing the main results obtained by the FAO and Latin America and the Caribbean during the 2020 – 2021 period. They are also expected to the highlight priorities for the next two years.

The other days are reserved for a series of ministerial meetings. There will also be national-level consultations and regional-level consultations with various stakeholders in order to identify areas of interest.