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Leaders urge action on climate change, hunger at FAO headquarters

Xinhua, October 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Leaders attending the ceremony for World Food Day at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters here on Friday stressed the close connection between hunger fight, sustainable agriculture and climate change.

They appealed for an urgent, collective, and coordinated action on all of these issues together, as the only way to really fight hunger and poverty in the world.

World Food Day is observed around the world on Oct. 16, with this year's theme being: "Climate is changing, food and agriculture must too."

Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goals would be possible for the global community only if climate change, poverty, and hunger are tackled together, according to FAO Director-General Jose Graziano Da Silva.

"Higher temperature and erratic weather patterns are already undermining the health of soils, forests, and oceans, on which agriculture and food security depend," Da Silva said at the ceremony.

"Those suffering most are the poorest and the hungry, and the vast majority of them are small family farmers living in rural areas of developing countries," the FAO chief stressed.

At the event, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi spoke of the global hunger fight as a mainly political issue. "Italy maintains that fight for food security, at this point in our history, is essentially a question of politics," he said.

Renzi said efforts to tackle food waste were crucial, and recalled that Italy passed a new law aimed at cutting the wastage of food each year by at least one million tons.

The law was approved in August, and entered into force in mid-September. Endit