The meeting is being held in the city of Trujillo, 570 kilometers north of Lima, one of the cities most affected by the outbreak of crime, for which 1,200 members of the National Police arrived a few days ago to reinforce security for the event.
The central theme is food security and is in its technical phase, which prepares the draft conclusions to be discussed by the Apec agriculture ministers on Saturday and Sunday.
Participants include the heads or their representatives from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.
The director of Agrarian Policies of the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation of Peru, Jorge Castro, explained that the phase of officials began with an exchange of experiences on food security and on the first day they focused on food recovery programs.
He added that the topic is of interest to his country because a lot of food is wasted and among the experiences presented by the visitors, he mentioned food recycling.
The ministerial meeting will be held under the chairmanship of the Peruvian minister, Ángel Manero, who has been the target of many harsh criticisms for declaring that Peru does not go hungry and rather eats abundantly.
He tried to minimize recent figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), according to which 51 percent of Peruvians suffer from moderate or severe food insecurity. Former Minister of Agriculture Milton Von Hesse declared that it seems that Manero has no idea of what food insecurity means and former Minister of Development and Social Inclusion Carolina Trivelli declared yesterday, when the Apec meeting was opening, that ‘what Minister Manero said is a disgrace’.
‘In the government nobody realizes that people are hungry’, added the former minister, who accused the minister of ignorance and indolence and a local newspaper stated that the incident has resulted in Manero being on a list of possible ministerial replacements.
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