The international conference on the issues of food security held in Tbilisi, Georgia, gave an opportunity to organize effective dialogue between the state sector and civil society.

Armenian Minister of Agriculture, Armen Harutyunyan, said the aforementioned at a conference Thursday.

In his words, such conferences are very important, since they give an opportunity to the state authorities and civil society to exchange information and cooperate more effectively. Moreover, they also improve the dialogue between different state structures, in this case the Ministries of Agriculture and Health.

“We must closely cooperate with the Agriculture Ministry in issues of food security and nutrition. The Agriculture Ministry must ensure the growth of self-dependence and development of organic agriculture in the country, which is necessary for healthy nutrition. The Health Ministry also deals with such issues, but if there is no dialogue between us, we will take different paths, and our country will face issues in the sphere of food nutrition. This conference was important also because it helped to raise the level of dialogue between the two ministries to a new level,” Harutyunyan noted.

For her part, Director of Oxfam Armenian Office, Margarita Hakobyan, noted that the conference, which ended on June 16, helped the representatives of state institutions to better understand what policy must be developed in this sphere in order to ensure food security in the country and advance the interests of small manufacturers more effectively.

Besides, Hakobyan noted that the conference enabled to compare the problems of Armenia and Georgia in the sphere of food security and understand the need for searching regional solutions to these problems. It is not ruled out that the countries can help each other and import food products from one another if necessary, the specialist stressed.  

An international conference on food security was held in Tbilisi on June 15-16. It was attended by the specialist and representatives of the Agriculture and Health Ministries of Armenia and Georgia, as well as international experts ready to share the experience of their countries.