Meeting between FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, and His Excellency Ahmet Bagci, Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Forestry of the Republic of Türkiye
Rome - FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, and H.E. Ahmet Bagci, Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Forestry of the Republic of Türkiye, met to discuss ways to further foster collaboration between FAO and Türkiye.
The Director-General congratulated the Deputy Minister on his appointment and thanked Türkiye for the continuous support, emphasizing that as host country for the FAO Subregional Office for Central Asia, it is a key partner for FAO in the subregion.
The Deputy Minister stated that Türkiye attached a lot of importance to the FAO Subregional Office and looked forward to further strengthening the office. He also added that they were planning to establish a Permanent Representation to FAO in Rome to further strengthen links with the Rome-based UN Agencies.
The Deputy Minister informed that Türkiye was pleased to continue the successful collaboration under the flagship FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programme (FTPP) in the subregion. He informed the Director-General that discussions with the Ministry recently began for FTPP Phase 3, which is not just about starting a new phase, but scaling up the existing collaborations. Currently FTPP already covers food security, rural women’s empowerment, forestry, food loss and waste, fisheries, food safety, agricultural development and national capacity enhancement. The Deputy Minister added that both the Agriculture and Forestry programmes contribute significantly to strengthening the capacities of the beneficiary countries. He mentioned that the tripartite collaboration and synergies created can pave the way for improving the South-South coordination mechanism driven by FAO in the subregion and beyond.
The Deputy Minister further informed the Director-General, that his country is planning to establish a Climate Change Center of Excellence to help mitigate the effects of climate change, which put a lot of pressure on natural resources.
The Director-General welcomed efforts for strengthening collaboration between Türkiye and FAO and expressed his confidence that the joint efforts could contribute significantly to make agrifood systems in the subregion more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable for the Four Betters.