⇒ The United Nations, in partnership with the Government of Italy organized the Pre-Summit Ministerial Roundtable of United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 in Rome from 26–28 July 2021.
UN Secretary-General Shri António Guterres, Prime Minister of Italy Shri Mario Draghi along with representatives of various countries, addressed the three-day summit.
Indian Representative:
Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar led a fifteen-member Indian delegation to the three-day UN Food Systems Pre-Summit 2021.
Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar virtually delivered the Ministerial Statement in the Pre-Summit of United Nations Food System Summit 2021 on 28 July 2021.
Highlights of Union Minister’s address:
» Union Minister emphasized the importance of Agriculture in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 as 12 out of 17 SDGs are directly dependent on agriculture.
» Union Minister listed the creation of Agriculture Infrastructure Fund with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore, formation of 10000 Farmer Producer Organizations, the PM KISAN Scheme through which an amount of 1.37 lakh crore has been credited to the bank accounts of 11 crore farmers.
» He highlighted the “Per Drop More Crop” scheme for irrigation, ‘Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana’ for organic farming as well as the ‘Soil Health Card’ Scheme to conserve water and soil resources.
» India has launched the Pradhan Mantri FasalBima Yojana (PMFBY) to provide insurance protection for covering the risk of farmers.
» India is committed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and in making our agri-food systems sustainable.
» The United Nations accepted the Government of India’s proposal to celebrate the year 2023 as ‘International Year of Millets’.
Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare Ms Shobha Karandlaje virtually addressed the Pre-Summit Ministerial Roundtable on “Transforming Food Systems for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Rising to the Challenge” of United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021.
She said “the UN Food Systems Summit has given us a lead to define the national pathways to transform our Food Systems into economically, socially and environmentally sustainable systems.