Monique Hepburn, News Editor
WESTERN BUREAU:
DR. DUNSTAN Campbell, Director-General of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), says his organisation will be seeking to promote classic Jamaican products as part of its objectives to develop a sustainable agricultural sector for the island.
"We want to bring together all the products of Jamaica that we consider icons of Jamaica both locally and internationally, so that people will know what is Jamaica," he said. "I knew about the Yam Festival when I was in Brussels. People come to experience what they have heard about and then that link between agriculture and tourism is created."
CLEAR OBJECTIVES
Dr. Campbell told Farmers Weekly that the FAO had clear objectives for sustainable agricultural development and the facilitation of linkages with other sectors in the economy.
He was speaking on Sunday at the FAO's World Food Day celebrations held at the St. Mary's Anglican Church in Montpelier, St. James. Scores of agricultural experts from various agencies, including the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), the Forestry Department and the agri-processing department of the Ebony Park HEART Academy were on hand to showcase their products and services.
World Food Day is celebrated annually and this year's theme is "Agriculture and Intercultural Dialogue."
The FAO representative said that more than 850 million people worldwide were hungry and world leaders must move swiftly to promote intercultural dialogue to stave off hunger and environmental degradation in their respective countries.
STATISTICS SHOW
The Director-General explained that FAO statistics show that at the start of the new millennium, 2.57 billion people depended on agriculture, hunting, fishing or forestry for their livelihoods, including those actively engaged in those activities and their non-working dependants. This figure represents 42 per cent of the world's population.
"At the World Food Summit held in Rome in 1996 and again in 2002, leaders vowed to reduce that number by half by 2015. Moreover, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals commit world leaders to reduce the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half by 2015, while ensuring environmental sustainability."
