Position adopted by the ministers of the americas during their second meeting regarding the post-pandemic reactivation of agriculture

We the Ministers and Secretaries of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, Food and Rural Development of the Americas, reaffirm our willingness to take action at the national, regional and hemispheric levels to support the food security and nutrition of our populations, which have been put at risk by the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we will undertake individual and joint actions to:

1.  Strengthen the production of food and agricultural, forestry, fishery and aquaculture products in our countries, recognizing the strategic role that the agrifood sector will play in reactivating our economies and providing opportunities for progress.
2. Apply sanitary measures, when necessary, to protect the health and life of humans, animals and crops, without this representing a restriction or impediment to international trade and the flow of food.
3. Affirm the importance of the risk analysis process for assessing, managing and communicating risks of concern to protect public health while enabling safe national and international trade of food and agricultural products.
4. Commit to improving transparency and predictability in the establishment and adoption of new national sanitary measures and protocols.
5. Strengthen the implementation of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS) by working collectively to enhance shared understanding of the provisions, including scientific justification, as they pertain to measures and protocols that protect human health as well as agricultural health and food safety.
6. Reaffirm our World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments to facilitate trade, not create unnecessary obstacles to trade, and protect human health and safety by working collectively to strengthen the implementation of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Trade Facilitation Agreements.
7. Maintain proper functioning of national and international markets, as well as supply chains, through the timely exchange of information on food availability, demand and prices.
8. [1]Continue supporting the participation of small and medium-scale agriculture as well as agricultural, fisheries and aquaculture production in agri-food chains, particularly during the pandemic and the subsequent period of economic recovery, through public policies, public and private investment, as well as the allocation of funding in the corresponding countries.
9. Reaffirm the importance of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex), International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) as the relevant international standard-setting bodies for food safety and quality and plant and animal health, and commit to actively enable and facilitate regional participation in the work of these bodies or related subsidiary bodies.
10. Reaffirm our support for international technical cooperation, through multilateral agencies in agriculture such as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), as well as our determination to complement our capacity building, innovation, inclusion and sustainability efforts, in the agricultural sector across the hemisphere, in accordance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
11. Reiterate the importance of Cooperation between the countries, in particular on matters affecting, whether directly or indirectly, the production, processing and trade of raw materials, food, and agricultural inputs and/or technologies that are essential to the development of agriculture and food.
12. Suriname – Jamaica – Bahamas [2]

July 2020