INTRODUCTION
With the need of focusing towards sustainable development and keeping in mind the depreciating resource level and overall health of the environment the United Nations has also been promoting it on an international level. Sustainable Development Goals have been setup by the United Nations General assembly in 2015 that are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. These goals are to be achieved by 2030.
MINISTER IN THE UN FOOD SUMMIT
Addressing the virtual conference of United Nations Food Systems Summit, Narendra Singh Tomar the agriculture minister of India stated the importance of agriculture in fulfilling the SDGs by 2030 and India is committed towards achieving these goals. He went on to say that 12 of these 17 goals were directly dependent on agriculture. Tomar also stressed on how agriculture is crucial for the socio-economic transformation of the developing countries. Listing out the various steps that India is taking in order to make its agri-food systems sustainable, Tomar mentioned the creation of an Agriculture Infrastructure Fund with a corpus of Rs.1 lakh Crore and targeting formation of 10,000 farmer producer organizations besides the PM-KISAN Scheme through which an amount of Rs.1.37 lakh Crore has been credited to the bank accounts of 11 Crore farmers. He also said that India is conscious of its commitments towards climate change and has taken several steps to make agriculture sustainable. The Per Drop More Crop scheme for irrigation; Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana’ for organic farming as well as the ‘Soil Health Card’ plan to conserve water and soil resources are some of the schemes being implemented in this direction, he added. India has also launched the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to provide insurance protection for covering the risk of farmers.
ABOUT THE FOOD SUMMIT
The minister then thanked the UN for accepting India’s proposal to celebrate the year 2023 as the ‘International Year of Millets’. Tomar was leading a delegation of 15 members to the 3 days UN Food Systems Pre-Summit 2021, organized by the United Nations and the Government of Italy. In view of the current scenario of Covid-19 the event, which is open to all who would like to participate, will take a hybrid format, with an in-person component complemented by a vast virtual programme and platform.
Through the Pre-Summit, the UN Food Systems Summit will reaffirm its commitment to promote human rights for all and ensure the most marginalized groups have an opportunity to participate in, contribute to and benefit from the Summit process. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi along with representatives of various countries, also addressed the three-day summit. The Pre-Summit of the UN Food Systems Summit will set the stage for the culminating global event in September by bringing together diverse actors from around the world to leverage the power of food systems to deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).