Pretoria - Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson has joined her counterparts from Brazil, Russia, India and China to discuss issues of mutual concern.
Joemat-Pattersson is currently in China for the second meeting of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Ministers of Agriculture and Agrarian Development.
The ministers are reviewing the progress made in the implementation of the Moscow Declaration - signed in 2010 at the first meeting - which focused on joint efforts for world food security.
During their meeting in China, the ministers have signed a declaration which commits their respective countries to:
- improve coordination and communication with international and regional organisations to ensure that issues of global food security, climate change, environmental protection, trade and investment are addressed;
- support global efforts to combat hunger and urge the international community to boost its aid in order to prevent the crisis in the Horn of Africa deteriorating further;
- up their efforts to help Africa countries improve their food production capacity;
- enhance agricultural cooperation among BRICS countries;
- construct an agricultural information and digital agriculture platform to provide more accurate long-term market forecast information for food producers and purchasers to reduce excessive speculative activities that result in high food prices and;
- establish the "BRICS Strategic Alliance for Agricultural Research and Technology Cooperation", which will pool efforts to address the major challenges the world faces with regards to agricultural technologies.
The meeting also resolved to adopt the Action Plan 2012-2016 to achieve these goals.
The plan includes:
- creating a basic agricultural information exchange system of BRICS countries, for which China will be the coordinating country;
- developing a general strategy to ensure access to food for the most vulnerable population - with Brazil as the coordinating country;
- reducing the impact of climate change on food security and adapting agriculture to climate change (coordinating country South Africa);
- enhancing agricultural technology cooperation and innovation (coordinating country India) and;
- trade and investment promotion (coordinating country Russia)
The ministers also agreed that the third BRICS meeting would take place in India in 2012, to review progress with the implementation of Action Plan 2012-2016.
