“Guyana is the place to be today,” declared Assistant Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Julio Berdegué, following the signing of two new agreements with the country.
The first agreement was signed between Berdegué and Guyana’s Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha. This agreement outlines areas of collaboration between the FAO and Guyana for the period 2022 to 2026.
Among those areas are the transformation to more sustainable agriculture food systems, building resilient value chains and agricultural communities with enhanced risk management capacity, increased use of digitalization and ICT to enhance efficiency and competitiveness in agriculture, and derisking the agriculture food system.
The second agreement is a Memorandum of Responsibilities signed between Berdegué and Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hugh Todd. This pact is in relation to Guyana’s hosting of the 38th Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2024.
This is the first time the conference will be hosted in Guyana and comes at a time when the country has been playing the leading role in agriculture and food security matters in CARICOM.
Delivering remarks following the signing of the two agreements, the FAO Assistant Director General said “Guyana is the place to be today. No other country in the Americas is conducting a transformation of its food systems to the extent or dynamism and [with the] level of political support that I have seen here in Guyana.”
He noted too that the FAO has been “working in this country for many, many years. We will continue to be here as long as the government and the people of Guyana believe we have something to offer to this country.”
