Vietnam pledges to the goal of “Zero hunger” by 2020

On November 29th 2018, at the ISG Plenary Meeting 2018 on “Sustainable Agriculture – Nutrition Development: Action Plan on “Zero Hunger” in Vietnam by 2025", Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) jointly announced “National action plan on Zero Hunger in Vietnam by 2025".

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong and Dr. Albert T. Lieberg, FAO Representative in Vietnam co-chaired and jointly announce “National Action Plan on Zero Hunger in Vietnam by 2025", as well as called for cooperation and support from international partners, concerned ministries and departments.

Speaking at the opening session, Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong said that Vietnam had been coming up from agriculture, which made agriculture – farmers – rural areas the top priority of the Party, the whole political system and all economic sectors. Over the past 30 years, from an importer of more than 1 million tons of food every year and poverty, Vietnam has become a middle-income country. Vietnam has only 30 years to develop agriculture from food shortages to meeting basic demand for food and nutrition of almost 100 million Vietnam people, and exporting to other markets (exports in 2017 reach to nearly 36.52 billion USD, and in 2018 to  nearly 40 billion USD), which demonstrates a great effort. Thanks to such the great effort, by 2015, the United Nations considered Vietnam as one of the emerging paradigms to overcome the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with eight core pillars.

The Minister noted that despite of significant achievements, Vietnam always had to uphold food security and poverty alleviation as Vietnam was facing substantial challenges posed by climate change. Only one storm could make a community, or a locality return to poverty if the storm preparation or the recovery after storm is not good enough. Therefore, Vietnam responds to the initiatives of the UN Secretary-General and international organizations. Vietnam would take the lead and pioneer of the program “Zero Hunger by 2025.”

Dr. Albert T. Lieberg, FAO Representative in Vietnam also asserted that as a UN agency, given the mission of ensuring food security and poverty reduction, FAO had implemented a wide range of global activities, especially agricultural programs to provide basis for training courses for farmers, as well as food and nutrition programs around the world. At the regional level, over the last 3 years, FAO has implemented initiatives on green growth, climate change programs, and other programs, etc. In Vietnam, FAO has promoted and enhanced capacities of the sensible food production system to ensure better agricultural development. With the support of MARD, FAO has implemented community-based models to ensure sustainable nutritional issues, food security, harmonization and institutionalization of the Government’s policies and programs.

Through two discussion sessions, the meeting shared plenty of domestic and international experience, initiatives and policy recommendations for the national action plan on zero hunger by 2025.

Collecting comments, Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong directed to concretize recommendations in the implementation of the action plan. It is advised to develop 5 types of models for 5 pillars in the North, Central and South areas, which will be reviewed after a short time for replication. In the immediate future, 3000 extremely difficult villages, representing vulnerable groups, difficult geographic areas and underdeveloped economic areas, must be prioritized to support.

Regarding to resources for implementation, the Minister affirmed that the PPP was one of the effective ways in the context of budgetary constraints.

On behalf of the MARD, Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong expressed his gratitude to the international organizations who have been and will commit to work with farmers, Vietnam agriculture to implement the MDGs in the new phase, so that Vietnam will become one of the pioneers in completing the “Zero Hunger by 2025”.

(All documents on the ISG Plenary Meeting is uploaded at http://www.isgmard.org.vn/detailInfomation.aspx?InfomationID=IN00000325).