Minister Zaia Introduces G8 Agriculture Ministers' Meeting, Announces Food Security Manifesto
14/04/09
The G8 Agriculture Ministers' Meeting that is due to be held in Cison di Valmarino, in the province of Treviso in the Veneto region of Italy, will be devoted to food security, to hunger in the world and to fluctuating farm prices in the marketplace, according to Italian Farm, Food and Forestry Policies Minister Luca Zaia, who introduced the upcoming event in the course of a news conference held at the Prefect's Office in Treviso today.
Minister Zaia explained that the meeting will be attempting to indentify guidelines for the development of farm policies, and that it will then submit those guidelines to the G8 summit in July: "It is our task to prepare a manifesto with which both countries and the major organisations can identify in the struggle against hunger in the world, and in their effort to guarantee food security and combat fluctuating prices while defending the identity of farm produce".
This G8 meeting, Zaia added, will be devoting a great deal of attention to speculation and its impact on hunger in the world: "The economic crisis has had an enormous impact on the preparatory phase leading up to this meeting, because it has brought major changes to the balances in the global economy. Farming can become the driving force from which we can set out again to overcome this crisis, a crisis that originated in areas far removed from the primary sector of the economy".
The meeting's organisers are now set to greet the delegations from all of the countries and international organisations that will be attending this, the first ever farm summit in the history of the G8. Given the specific nature of the issues addressed, the debate is naturally going to involve the countries and international organisations that play a leading role in agriculture worldwide.
The farm ministers from the G8 member countries (Italy, Canada, Russian Federation, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) will be joined by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, by the Czech Republic's deputy agriculture minister in his capacity as head of the delegation from the EU duty presidency (currently held by the Czech Republic), and by the agriculture ministers of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, along with the ministers from Argentina, Australia and Egypt. Invitations to join the talks have also been extended to the World Bank, the FAO, the IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), the OECD, the World Food Programme, the UN's High Level Task Force on World Food Security, and the African Union.
Some 450 journalists and media professionals from all over the world are accredited to cover the three-day talks.
