DAMASCUS - The Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Ministry, in cooperation with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), marked the World Food Day which coincides this year with un unprecedented rises in food prices around the world and an escalation global hunger, with more than 800 millions suffering from hunger around the world.
This year's marking of World Food Day comes under the slogan "agricultural cooperations... key to feeding the world" to shed light on how agricultural cooperations can help provide food security and job opportunities and free people from poverty.
Minister of Agriculture Subhi al-Abdullah said that the World Food Day comes at a time when changes, repercussions and wars have drained many local, regional and international efforts that could have been better used to prevent the deterioration of the issue of food around the world, with these factors limiting the availability of agricultural products leading to an increase in their prices.
He pointed out that Syria realized the importance of agricultural cooperations decades ago, as the first agricultural cooperative society was established in Damascus Countryside in 1943, noting that Syrian governments made farmers organizations their partners in realizing food security and self-sufficiency.
Al-Abudllah pointed out that the government implemented a program for increasing agricultural production and introduced advanced irrigation projects, working to increase the working force in the agricultural sector and improving the living conditions in rural areas, in addition to supporting farmers and livestock breeders through a fund for reducing the effects of droughts and natural disasters.
In turn, FAO representative in Syria Abdullah Bin Yehea underlined the importance of agricultural cooperations in providing food as they are capable of overcoming restrictions and mitigating the effects of crises.
He affirmed that the FAO will continue its work to revitalize and support agricultural cooperations to achieve the goal of a world that enjoys food security and sustainability.
For his part, Chairman of the Farmers General Union Hammad al-Sauud said that agricultural cooperations achieve agricultural clustering which reduces fragmentation of agricultural properties, in addition to reducing production costs through group work which in turn reduces prices and better results in terms of quality and volume.
The World Food Day is marked on October 16th.
© SANA (Syria Arab News Agency) 2012
