The Ministers of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) have proposed that each member state annually budget funds for the realization of various commitments made for the sector.

The position was defended today by the Angolan Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, António Francisco de Assis, at the end of the III plenary meeting of the Council of Food and Nutritional Security (COSAN - CPLP), held in Luanda on the sidelines of the XIII Summit of Heads of State and Government of the CPLP, which Angola is hosting this Saturday.

António Francisco de Assis also appealed for funds "that can be earmarked for the CPLP Special Fund".

"We would like to mention the relevance of the implementation of the commitments we proposed in the previous session held in Cape Verde, among them the strengthening of partnerships with FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] and IFAD [International Fund for Agricultural Development]," he said.

The objective of these partnerships is to generate "greater opportunities for technical support and financing of the actions foreseen in the indicative plan of activities of the community food security strategy, for its consolidation, and the need to identify safe sources of financing for the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security," the minister added.

The CPLP Ministers of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries consider it important that issues related to the creation of conditions to ensure the human right to adequate food, the availability of access to food in the member states, as well as institutional capacity building in the field of food and nutritional security of the group are analyzed in the conference of heads of state.

They also argue that the exchange and sharing of experiences, soil degradation and availability, and water stress in food production processes in member states should be addressed, as well as climate change and its impacts on agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and forests.

The conservation and processing of products of vegetable, animal, and fishery origin, the rational use of phytopharmaceuticals in agriculture and livestock, the exchange and sharing of experience in managing the covid-19 pandemic, which affects the CPLP member states and the world, with great negative impact on food and nutritional security and, consequently, the well-being of populations are also topics that should deserve the attention of CPLP leaders.

António Francisco de Assis emphasized the importance of cooperation among the member states with the reciprocity of advantages and the fulfillment of the objectives of sustainable development.

In statements to the press, the Angolan governor said that the document approved at the meeting highlights the need for greater cooperation among all member states so that the issue related to food is a primary subject on the agendas of the member states.

"And make it so that the different countries can share experiences of how this issue of food has been resolved. We think that at the CPLP level we have different levels of development, but there is already a consolidated experience in some of our countries, which if sufficiently shared can help the different members, those who have more difficulties, to reach better levels," he said.

The minister cited the experiences of Brazil, in increasing production, of Portugal, a country with enough knowledge, technology, human capital, that can help all the other members to reach higher levels, as is "intended at the level of the CPLP organization.

Regarding the covid-19 pandemic, the Angolan minister stressed the impact on the population's food security and the need to find ways to overcome it.

"I usually say that, although we all wear masks, at a certain moment we have to take off the mask to eat, it means that we have to know how to live with this new situation, not to stop in the efforts that we have to develop, in the specific case of African countries, like Angola, every year we have population growth rates, in other words, more and more people in the country in need of food, this equation is that we have to study very well and solve it so that the population's right in relation to the population," he stressed.

The CPLP, an organization created in 1996, is made up of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor.