FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean

Agri-food systems must be at the center of the regional recovery efforts from the pandemic

16/04/2021

April 16, 2020, Lima, Peru / Santiago de Chile / San José - The Ministers and Secretaries of Agriculture of the Americas held their III Hemispheric Meeting, with the participation of 31 countries.

The meeting allowed to share the progress of policies, plans and actions to contain the effects of COVID-19 in the Americas, as well as initiatives for the recovery and transformation of agri-food systems.

“In recent decades our countries have given strong impulses to agribusiness and agro-exports. After the pandemic, we must complement these efforts with public policies to ensure the sustainable nutrition of our populations,” said Federico Tenorio, Peru's Minister of Agrarian Development and Irrigation.

Tenorio highlighted the role that agri-food systems have played in the development of the Americas in recent decades: “Before they contributed to providing responses to poverty and inequality, today they must face the pandemic and its impact on food security, giving access to healthy diets and varied products in the rural and the urban world. "

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, praised the region's contribution to preventing the COVID-19 health crisis from turning into a food crisis: “Now you must to be the architects of recovery, a recovery with transformation.”

According to QU, this transformation will require innovation and digitization, higher agricultural productivity and a sustainable agri-food system that guarantees safe and healthy diets.

In addition, he pointed out that public and private investments will be required to create agri-food systems with a lower carbon footprint, which protect and conserve the environment and biodiversity, promoting greater equity for small farmers, indigenous peoples, rural women and youth.

The Director General of IICA, Manuel Otero, welcomed the discussion on agri-food systems during the meeting. "The prefix agro is key: it recognizes that, without agricultural production, there are no raw materials that can be later transformed into food and, therefore, it would be a utopia to achieve food security."

“The agri-food systems - added Otero - are already in a process of irreversible change, which must continue to evolve through a synergistic alliance with the environment. We are facing a great opportunity to develop more mature systems, with unrestricted respect for the environment and an emphasis on nutritional quality.”

Otero renewed his support for the UN Food Systems Summit convened, highlighting that it is necessary to increase the representation of Latin America and the Caribbean and its farmers in the process.

The Regional Representative of the FAO, Julio Berdegué, also urged the ministers, ministers and secretaries of Agriculture, “to put on the table the objectives of their countries and the conditions for the achievement of this transformation, during the period prior to the Summit on Food Systems. Latin America and the Caribbean must play a key role and be an example at the global level. The transformation of agri-food systems is already underway, and it is unstoppable”, said Berdegué.

Facing the impact of the pandemic

The impact of the pandemic has been felt stronger in Latin America and the Caribbean than almost anywhere else in the world: the region has suffered 27.8% of deaths globally from COVID19.

During the III Hemispheric Meeting, FAO's chief economist, Máximo Torero, explained that the region will see a 7.7% drop in GDP, a 20-year setback in its levels of extreme poverty, and a 12-year setback in poverty.

“The largest economic decline in the world as a result of COVID19 will be seen in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2.7 million companies have closed. It could take a decade for the region to return to the pre-pandemic level”, said Torero.

Faced with this impact, Torero called for increasing the resilience of the regional agri-food system, with investments in early warning systems, a One Health approach; improvements in social protection systems and a redirection of subsidies and productive supports.

About the meeting

The meeting - convened by the Ministers and Secretaries of Agriculture of the Americas - was chaired by Federico Tenorio Calderón, Minister of Agrarian Development and Irrigation of Peru, with the support of FAO and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), as technical secretariat.

At the first hemispheric meeting in April 2020, ministers and secretaries from 34 countries opened a space for dialogue to compare policies and actions aimed at preventing the collapse of food systems.

At the second meeting, in July 2020, they shared updated information on the actions being taken to sustain international agri-food trade, food security, trade flows, supply chains and to guarantee family farmers' access to input and product markets amid the pandemic.