By IANS,
New Delhi: Cooperation among Brazil, Russia, India, China – the BRIC countries – would be crucial in addressing the issue of enhancing food production so as to meet the challenge of providing food to growing world population, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said Thursday.
In a statement issued from Moscow after adopting the Moscow Declaration in the first meeting of BRIC agriculture ministers, Pawar said: “The initiative of BRIC countries, comprising 40 percent of world’s population, to get together and deliberate upon the important issue of food security and hunger, is timely.”
“We have agreed to set up an expert working group for implementation of measures collectively agreed today. This expert group will meet on a regular basis to prepare specific proposals and to report to BRIC agriculture ministers the progress on various items,” he said.
“On our part, we are committed to remove hunger and malnutrition from the country through various initiatives and further improve our agriculture to ensure adequate availability of food grains to all,” he said.
He said the summit deliberated upon the need for transfer of environmentally friendly technologies from developed countries to developing countries and they urged the international community to facilitate such technology sharing.