Ukraine, Martina: “9 billion are needed for food in Africa”, the request of the FAO at the summit on 8 June

Great expectations for the “Mediterranean Ministerial Dialogue on Food Security”, the summit scheduled for next Wednesday, June 8, which will bring together 23 countries of the Mediterranean Area (European and African sides) and 7 international organizations on the subject of security food. “First of all, we at FAO turn to the international community to ask that developing countries in the African context be supported with extraordinary funding. For this reason we will present at the Dialogue a tool called Food Import Financing Facility which aims to mobilize international resources for 9 billion euros precisely to support the cost of food in the most vulnerable countries “. This was underlined by Maurizio Martina, deputy deputy general director of FAO, former Minister of Agriculture, speaking with Adnkronos. “It is very important that on Wednesday there be this appointment wanted by the Farnesina on which Minister Di Maio worked directly together with Deputy Minister Sereni with our technical collaboration” he says. Immediately after February 24, in fact, explains Martina, “we wondered how Italy could anticipate the difficult scenarios on the subject of food security also due to the effects of the conflict in Ukraine. There is an excellent answer because everyone is grasping the urgency. of the joint initiative. – he reports – This initiative is the natural continuation of the work carried out last year when Italy was president of the G20 on Food Security issues “. It is a first virtual summit at which the FAO will speak with the director general Qu Dongyu together with the foreign or agriculture ministers of the respective countries. ‘Two phases of emergency: today linked to prices and tomorrow to shortage’ Another front of the summit of Wednesday will address the equally urgent problem of improving the efficiency of the use of fertilizers, because “in addition to unblocking the commercial flow from Russia and Belarus, it is essential to optimize their use, through the use of data and digital soil maps to consume less and consume better: we will make available a work carried out in those countries to calibrate the use of this scarce good “explains Martina. Participating in the summit will be 6 international organizations in addition to the FAO, Union of the Mediterranean, Ifad, Wfp, the EU Commission, the African Union and the World Bank. Another objective will be “to mutually update each other on the real situation of food security in the most vulnerable contexts of the Mediterranean area and on the other, therefore, to outline common actions to deal with the risks of food security in the coming months. In particular, starting from the countries in development of the African area, we know that there are many who are suffering from heavy food inflation, radical climate change and therefore problems of access to some primary food goods, especially wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and fertilizers. two emergency phases to manage, today’s one linked to prices and tomorrow’s phase which risks being linked to food shortages “. Meanwhile, Martina warns, “after 100 days of war, 3 million tons of wheat and 12 million tons of corn are missing, which should come out of Ukraine and which we expect to come out, in addition to the approximately 20 million tons of corn and wheat blocked. in the ports of the Black Sea that risk rotting “. “The hope is that all those quantities will be released according to an agreement between the parties and not through unilateral initiatives, – adds Martina – the UN is also working hard on it, we try to assist all the actions that can go in the sign of a agreement to unblock this situation “.