Editor TLN
21 Jan. () –
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has called for preventing food from being used as an instrument of economic pressure and has appealed to the need to maintain multilateral trade, based on rules, open and non-discriminatory to ensure the food supply in all regions of the world.
This was stated at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA, for its name in English), which was held in Berlin this Saturday and has been dedicated to the transformation of food systems and the global response to multiple crises .
Planas considers it necessary to strengthen the governance instruments of food systems “to mitigate destabilizing factors and ensure that they fulfill their function, which is none other than to ensure the availability of affordable food for the entire population.”
Thus, he has ensured that in a scenario like the current one, with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the effects of climate change and the ravages of the war in Ukraine, “the right to healthy food and the fight against Hunger and malnutrition are more relevant than ever.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Planas has drawn attention to the risks derived from climate change, “which produces increasingly extreme and frequent adverse phenomena, such as torrential rains and droughts, which put the continuity of food production at risk.”
For this reason, he considers it essential to develop risk management instruments such as agricultural insurance, which, in the case of Spain, “constitute a solid system that allows farmers to maintain their investments in crops with the guarantee that they will be protected if conditions climatic conditions destroy crops.
He has also reiterated that it is essential to invest in the modernization of sustainable irrigation, with the incorporation of new technologies in water management to ensure a more efficient use of it and energy savings.
“In a scenario of low rainfall and limited water resources, we must not stop irrigating, but use better the water intended for crops”, assured the minister, noting that in many arid countries irrigated production is the that offers more stability to guarantee the supply of food.
