Fertilizer prices and agri-food systems

Thank you, Madam Chair,

The Dominican delegation wishes to thank our good friend Ambassador Harold Forsyth, Permanent Representative of Peru, for having raised this subject, which, as the days go by, becomes ever more relevant and worrying for our Hemisphere and the world. We also wish to express our thanks for the valuable presentation by Mr. Manuel Otero, Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).

The rise in fertilizer prices on the international market is a situation that fills our countries with concern; it is an ever more serious threat to food security worldwide, affecting chiefly the families living in poverty and extreme poverty in our countries.

The rise in fertilizer prices and their potential scarcity are a matter of priority interest for our Organization, as is the decision to follow the evolution of the issue jointly with the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI), with the active participation of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF).

The situation before us requires coordinated and concrete actions on the part of our countries and the international community, for which the Dominican Republic offers its full cooperation, working in a coordinated way within our Organization and in other specialized forums such as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), among others.

Madam Chair, dear colleagues,

Our delegation will continue to give due attention to the evolution of this issue and to the coordinated search for measures and actions that can help limit the threat that rising fertilizer prices pose to food production in our countries.

Thank you very much.