EMTV Online
APEC economies have been urged to continue to build and strengthen their efforts to address core issues of the Policy Partnership on Food Security (PPFS).
Department of Agriculture and Livestock acting Secretary and Chair of PPFS, Mr Francis Daink, in his opening statement of the 12th PPFS meeting on Sunday (05 August 2018) called for continuation of the spirit of cooperation amongst the APEC member economies.
“I’m confident and optimistic that our meeting today (05 August 2018) will continue to build and strengthen our efforts to address core issues of PPFS such as food and nutrition security, food safety, climate change, trade and marketing of food products, food loss and waste and cross cutting issues such as gender inclusion, and productivity and sustainability of food value chains.”
Mr Daink said the PPFS fore play an important role to provide policy direction for food and nutrition security in the APEC region, which is reflected in the APEC Food Security Road Map 2020, which is a comprehensive food security plan for APEC Region.
The priorities for PPFS this year is focus on food security in agriculture and fisheries sectors; climate change and gender inclusion, which is reflected in the meeting agendas of 11th PPFS Meeting and will continue for 12th PPFS Meeting.
“For food security, our aim is to promote sustainable production of agriculture and fisheries products; improve food security, food safety and nutrition; increase trade of agriculture and fisheries products; promote investment in infrastructure and reduce food loss and waste.”
“Climate change is one of the biggest threats to food systems in APEC region due to the region high vulnerability to natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, floods and droughts.”
Hence, he said all APEC member economies must strongly promote climate smart resilience food systems that can sustainably increase productivity and income and adapt and mitigate climate change to ensure that food supply chains are not disrupted because any disruption to food supply chains in the APEC region has the potential to cause global food insecurity due to the fact that APEC region controls about 50% of global food production.
