Dr. Chelston Brathwaite, Director General of Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture,
Members of the Head Table,
Distinguished Permanent Representatives and Permanent Observers,
Representatives from international and regional organizations,
Delegates,
Experts,
OAS and IICA staff members,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning and welcome at the Headquarters of the Organization of American States.

At the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, our Heads of State and Government reaffirmed the need to deal with urgency with those issues affecting access to and the availability of food in our Hemisphere and to promote greater investment in the agricultural sector.

I believe that the objective of today’s conference is exactly that: to focus our collective attention on these two important issues: food security and investment in agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean.

There is no doubt that food security is one of the today’s most pressing issues.

According to the World Food Program, estimates of the total number of people living in hunger are more than 900 million. The WFP also identifies and additional 923 million people as food insecure.

According to experts, the current world population of 6 billion will have risen to 9 billion by 2050 and will require twice as much food, but, at the same time, we will have less land available for food production.

Our governments need to begin thinking about long-term strategies for sustainably producing the food that will be needed in our Hemisphere.

IICA believes that one of the best strategies for lifting people out of poverty in Latin American and the Caribbean is to invest in agriculture. The agricultural sector plays a pivotal role in the lives of people in the Americas, providing food and employment, as well as constituting the base of our agro –industry and for improving rural life in an meaningful way.

Currently, the region invests only US$ 3 billion (0.54% of GDP) in research and development, which is not nearly enough to actively compete in the global food market and to meet the challenges of climate change and its effect on agriculture.

Investment in agriculture is good business. Agriculture’s performance and its contribution to our countries’ economic development has traditionally been undervalued, because it is measured using only information about harvests and the sale of raw materials, mainly crops and livestock. As a result, the sector’s backward and forward linkages with agro-industry, the service and trade sectors and, in general, the rest of the economy is not accounted for.

For example, according to official figures, Chile’s agricultural sector contributes 5.6% to national GDP. However, if one takes into account the linkages with other sectors then agricultural performance contributes to 32.1% of GDP. Similarly, in the case of Mexico, if one uses the traditional measures then agriculture only contributes 4.6% of GDP. However, when one considers agriculture’s linkages with other sectors, then its contribution increases to 24.5% of GDP.

Investing in agriculture also means focusing on the development of rural communities. According to the World Bank’s Development Report 2008, three (3) out of every four (4) poor people in developing countries live in rural areas. That amounts to 2.1. billion people living on less than $2 a day. Most of these people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and sometimes their survival.

As the Director General of IICA, Dr. Chelston Brathwaite, has said on several occasions, if agriculture and rural areas are to really contribute to national development we must consider a new, more holistic, development model. And on many occasions we have supported this vision from the perspective of the inter-relationship between democracy, development and security. This new paradigm must integrate agriculture and the rural economy into the overall development agenda of our countries and must recognize the multidimensional contributions of agriculture and rural life to food and energy security, water supply, employment, environmental conservation, peace and social stability.

The Leaders attending the Summit in Trinidad called for precisely such a reformulation when they stressed the need to reposition agriculture and rural issues in our national development strategies.

In closing, there is no morally justifiable reason for the persistence of hunger and malnutrition in a Hemisphere as prosperous as ours. The time has come to take actions that will allow the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to capitalize on the contributions that the agricultural sector and rural areas can make to enhanced food security and the alleviation of poverty.

I hope that the discussions here today and at the Ministerial Meeting in Jamaica, as well as the Global Conferences on Food Security at the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, will result in concrete actions to address this issue.

I thank you for your attention and wish to very productive discussions.