At a meeting at the Cuban Embassy in Rome with members of that diplomatic mission, the Cuban official highlighted the positive development of this biennial event, which ran from July 1-7, during which debates focused on water-related problems.

The meeting was attended by some 120 ministers of agriculture and other high-ranking officials from all 194 member States of the international organization, who also discussed issues related to food and agriculture at three round tables and several parallel events.

The Cuban Agriculture minister told Prensa Latina that now “work must be done to make concrete progress,” because “the important thing is to make decisions into action.”

“The peoples deserve and need their food to be guaranteed,” stressed Pérez, who referred to the efforts being made by Cuba to develop agriculture and meet the nutritional requirements of the population, amid a very complex situation.

“In Cuba, the Government’s will to meet the needs of the population is very high, but the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States is a big limitation,” he stressed.

Pérez referred to the worsening of the already difficult situation, after Cuba’s inclusion on Washington’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

On the other hand, Cuba is still suffering from the worldwide effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the problems resulting from the current conflict in Ukraine, including the increase in food and agricultural inputs prices, in addition to the effects of climate change, which is generating a real environmental crisis.

In this difficult context, the Cuban Government implemented a set of public policies to promote the country’s development as a prosperous and sustainable socialist nation, among which is the recent approval of the Law on Food Sovereignty and Nutritional Education, he explained.

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