BRICS meet to focus on food security, farmer welfare: Chouhan
A five-day meeting of the BRICS grouping will commence in Indore on Tuesday to discuss food security, smart farming, global agricultural trade and farmer welfare, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Monday.
The discussions under India’s presidency will include a three-day agriculture working group meeting from June 9 and a two-day BRICS ministerial meeting from June 12, he said.
BRICS is an intergovernmental organisation comprising eleven major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. Highlighting the significance of the meeting, Chouhan said BRICS is a very strong voice of the developing countries in the world.
“Around half of the world’s population dwells in BRICS countries. It has 42 per cent of the global agricultural land and accounts for more than 42 per cent of the produce. Of the 58 crore farmers across the world, 70 per cent small cultivators live in BRICS nations,” he said.
The Union Minister said the five-day gathering will deliberate on food security, farmer welfare, nutrition, climate-resilient smart agriculture, facilitation of international agricultural trade, supply chains, “digital agriculture”, research, knowledge exchange, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
He said a joint declaration will be issued after consensus among the BRICS agriculture ministers. Chouhan recalled that India has presided over BRICS meetings in 2012, 2016 and 2021. Last month, Chouhan had told reporters in Indore that the BRICS meeting, to be held under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would prove to be a historic opportunity for the global agriculture sector.
