The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is gathering ministers and representatives from Latin America in Brasilia starting this Monday to discuss the fight against hunger and set objectives for the next two years. The 39th FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean will be held in the Brazilian capital until Friday and will feature the agency's Director-General, Qu Dongyu, and other high-ranking authorities. During the first two days, senior officers appointed by member states will fine-tune technical consensus and formulate recommendations to be later elevated to the ministerial segment of the Conference. According to FAO, today's session is reserved for approving the program, the co-chairs of the event, and the schedule, as well as discussing the strategic priorities that will guide subsequent ministerial decisions. In one of their first decisions, the countries unanimously appointed Brazilian ministers Carlos Fávaro (Agriculture) and Paulo Teixeira (Agrarian Development) as co-chairs of this regional conference. «Brazil managed to get off the UN's hunger map and we have proposed a regional dialogue to exchange experiences so that our countries can produce their own food and have food sovereignty,» expressed Teixeira upon assuming the post. The officers will draft a report of the regional conference by the end of these first two days, which will subsequently be submitted to the ministers for analysis. Ministerial meetings will begin on Wednesday, with the presence of the Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Director-General of the FAO, Qu Dongyu. The ministers will be responsible for examining, in person and virtually, matters of high priority regarding the challenges for the transformation of agri-food systems in the region, setting their goals for the next two years. Latin America and the Caribbean has experienced a decline in food insecurity indices in recent years, falling from 33.7% in 2020 to 25.2% in 2024, which represented one of the largest reductions globally, according to FAO data. However, there are still 33 million people in the region who suffer from hunger and 182 million do not have access to a healthy diet for various reasons, including economic poverty, rising food prices, and climate change.
