{"id":76151,"date":"2015-02-26T06:18:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T11:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/selasite.azurewebsites.net\/fao-ending-hunger-and-malnutrition-a-top-priority-for-caribbean-region\/"},"modified":"2015-02-26T06:18:23","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T11:18:23","slug":"fao-ending-hunger-and-malnutrition-a-top-priority-for-caribbean-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/fao-ending-hunger-and-malnutrition-a-top-priority-for-caribbean-region\/","title":{"rendered":"FAO: Ending hunger and malnutrition a top priority for Caribbean region"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nassau, February 26, 2015.- Over the last two decades efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition in the Caribbean have made substantial progress, but these need to be further strengthened, according to FAO Director-General Jos\u00e9 Graziano da Silva.<\/p>\n<p\/>  Since 1990 the prevalence of undernourishment in the Caribbean fell from 27 to 20 percent, but even now more than 7.5 million people still suffer hunger while obesity is another challenge the region faces, he noted in a statement yesterday to agriculture ministers from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). They were meeting ahead of this week\u2019s CARICOM summit which is also slated to take place today in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n<p\/>  \u201cEnsuring food security and nutrition for all needs to be our main goal,\u201d Graziano da Silva said, noting how the CARICOM nations are addressing this by bringing together a series of strategies that tackle the \u201cmultiple dimensions of food insecurity\u201d.<\/p>\n<p\/>  \u201cThis is a winning combination, and FAO is proud to play an active part in all these efforts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p\/>  At a CARICOM level this is represented by CARICOM\u2019s Food and Nutrition Security Action Plan approved in 2011. The FAO Director-General noted that at a national level many of CARICOM\u2019s 15 member states are developing national action plans in response to the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by the United Nations Secretary-General.<\/p>\n<p\/>  Tapping agriculture\u2019s full potential<\/p>\n<p\/>  Speaking to the ministers, the FAO Director-General stressed how a vibrant agricultural sector helps to drive sustainable and inclusive development in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n<p\/>  \u201cAgriculture creates employment opportunities, especially important for the youth, and is critical to reduce rural poverty. Agriculture can supply the Caribbean tourism industry,\u201d he said, adding that local production can help recover and revitalise traditional crops and increase self-sufficiency during times of volatile international food prices and food import bills.<\/p>\n<p\/>  Building resilience against natural hazards<\/p>\n<p\/>  Graziano da Silva noted how the island nations of the Caribbean are particularly vulnerable to extreme natural events such as hurricanes, how these are made more frequent, violent and unpredictable by climate change, and how they threaten agriculture, food security and sustainable development.<\/p>\n<p\/>  In this context, he underscored the importance of disaster risk management, raising preparedness levels, adapting to climate change and building resilience.<\/p>\n<p\/>  FAO\u2019s work<\/p>\n<p\/>  FAO\u2019s Director-General outlined to the assembled agriculture ministers the main aspects of the organization\u2019s three regional initiatives noting how they will provide important support to  formal discussions and priority setting that will take place at the next FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016.<\/p>\n<p\/>  The first of FAO\u2019s regional initiatives centres on supporting countries\u2019 food and nutrition security efforts through zero hunger and malnutrition programmes; improving food and feed systems to address the food import bill; building resilience, and; strengthening agriculture, food security and nutrition governance and policy.<\/p>\n<p\/>  The second focuses on strengthening family farming, recognizing that in the Caribbean as in many other parts of the developing world, family farmers play a crucial role in increasing local availability of food thus reducing hunger and malnutrition.<\/p>\n<p\/>  FAO\u2019s third regional initiative works to improve food and feed systems and is specifically designed for the Caribbean. It aims to boost and add value to local production; recover local products; reduce the dependency on food imports and; a provide employment opportunities, especially for youth, in agriculture and aquaculture.<\/p>\n<p\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FAO: Ending hunger and malnutrition a top priority for Caribbean region<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boletines-regionales"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}