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Showing posts with label Near East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Near East. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

FAO convenes 34th Session on Near East regional confab 2018

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Near East Regional Conference has opened in Italy bringing together delegates from 30 member countries across the region, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The participants, NaijaAgroNet gathered, include 15 government ministers, to elaborate on regional challenges and priorities for food security, and to promote regional coherence on global policies.

The Conference is set within the framework of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 2 Zero Hunger. At a high-level side event on Zero Hunger on 10 May, attendees will examine the challenges to achieving Zero Hunger in conflict zones including Somalia and Yemen, and develop recommendations for strengthening collective action.

The agenda also includes agricultural transformation in the region and the challenge of youth employment and migration; adapting to climate change in semi-arid areas through agroecology; and regional cooperation to address transboundary plant, animal and fish pests and diseases.


Results and priorities for FAO in the Near East and North Africa Region will also be raised.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Water, fundamental for food security in North Africa, Near East

Access to water is a fundamental need for food security, human health and agriculture, and its looming scarcity in the North Africa and Middle East region, reports NaijaAgroNet.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said in Cairo, that this is a huge challenge requiring an "urgent and massive response."

Accessible fresh water in the region, he said, has fallen by two-thirds in the past 40 years.

“It now amounts to 10 times less per capita availability than the worldwide average, underscoring the need for a significant overhaul of farming systems, he said.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that a recent study by FAO showed that higher temperatures may shorten growing seasons in the region by 18 days and reduce agricultural yields a further 27 per cent to 55 per cent less by the end of this century.

The rising sea level in the Nile Delta, FAO said, is exposing Egypt to the danger of losing substantial parts of the most productive agriculture land due to salinization.

"Competition between water-usage sectors will only intensify in the future between agriculture, energy, industrial production and household needs," he said.

Graziano da Silva attended a high-level meeting covering FAO's collaboration with Egypt on the ‘1.5 million feddan initiative', the government's plan to reclaim eventually up to two million hectares of desert land for agricultural and other uses.

He expressed his strong support to the Egyptian Authorities and committed to back programmes aiming at addressing water scarcity and promoting climate resilient agriculture.


The Director-General's visit to Egypt included meetings with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Investment and International Cooperation, as well as the Secretary General of the League of Arab States.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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