Sustainable agriculture to ensure food security

BRUNEI , as part of the 21-member grouping of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has reaffirmed its commitment to ensure regional and global food security, as well as the need to take more action to achieve this.

A joint-statement by APEC Ministers also emphasised on the need to achieve sustainable agricultural growth.

In pursuing this goal, we will take concrete actions to boost investment in agriculture while actively adopting existing and innovative agricultural technologies. We commit to create an enabling environment that encourages increased public and private investment in agriculture, take note of the positive role of foreign direct investment on increasing agricultural production, the statement read.

Ministers at the APEC Ministerial Meetings held over the last two days discussed ways of increasing the stability of the food market, ensuring access to food for socially vulnerable groups, introducing innovative technologies in agriculture, and countering illegal exploitation of marine resources.

Russia's Minister of Economic Development Andrey Belousov told the media the Declaration on Food Security was adopted as one of the annexes to the Leaders' Declaration.

"It is a very important achievement and it virtually guarantees access to food for all population groups of all the economies."

The APEC economies are in the process of agreeing on collective actions to encourage investment and trade, infrastructure, storage facilities for agricultural goods and products, and creating rapid response mechanisms in cases of food crisis, he added.

Regarding the establishment the APEC Policy Partnership on Food Security (PPFS), a high-level mechanism to ensure the policy and technical cooperation necessary to achieve food security in the region, ministers supported the PPFS long-term goal to succeed by 2020 in setting up a food system structure sufficient to provide lasting food security to the economies of the region.

The ministers also supported the technical cooperation and capacity building activities in education and training, promoting sustainable environmental and natural resource management and infrastructure development related to food security, enhancing agricultural information systems and analysis, and improving preparedness for natural and anthropogenic disasters and cross-border threats.

With the launch of the Asia-Pacific Food Security Information Platform (APIP) in March 2012 in Japan, which was designed as a web-based resource to share regional information on food security, the ministers encouraged APIP to go forward with the steps directed to establish links with the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) created in the framework of the G20 in June 2011 in Paris.

Dipetik dari - The Brunei Times