THE United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) steers international efforts to achieve food security for all and ensures that people have regular access to enough high-quality food. The Committee on Agriculture (COAG) is one of FAO’s governing bodies providing overall policy and regulatory guidance on agricultural issues. It also provides advice and recommendations to the FAO conference on global agricultural policy and regulatory matters, and to the FAO council on matters relating to the organization’s priorities, programmes and budgets. The COAG was established in 1971 and has over 130 member Nations, generally meets every two years to review specific matters related to agriculture, food and nutrition referred to the committee.
It was July 2018, when India received invitation for participation in 26th session of FAO Committee of Agriculture meeting scheduled from 1–5 October, 2018 at FAO, Rome, Italy. The Government of India approved the delegation, consisting of Dr S K Malhotra, the then Agriculture Commissioner as Head of delegation and Dr S K Chaudhari, the then ADG (Soil and Water Management) now DDG (NRM) with ICAR. The Head of delegation took the initiatives after consultation in the Ministry for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare to take forward the International Year of Millets agenda from India. The matter was taken up through Dr Alka Bhargav, JS (International Cooperation) and Ms Reenat Sandhu, Ambassador EoI, Rome with Dr Robert G Guei, Secretary of the Committee on Agriculture of FAO for inclusion in the agenda. But the FAO wanted a request from Agriculture Minister, Government of India for this purpose. Accordingly, in the office of Agriculture Commissioner, Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, the request letter from Hon’ble Agriculture Minister dated 14th August, 2018 addressed to Mr Jose Graziano da Silva, DG, FAO was initiated. In reply to this letter, after thorough examination by FAO concerned division, the agenda was accepted at later stage for inclusion in the already circulated agenda additionally and was communicated back by a letter from DG, FAO to Sh. Radha Mohan Singh, the then Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India.
After having an approval for inclusion of proposal from India for consideration of discussion in COAG, the detailed proposal on background, nutrition, multiple uses, resilience to climate change, sustainable production systems, harvest and post-harvest operations with broad objectives set for International Year of Millets were developed by Dr S K Malhotra and accordingly submitted to Secretary COAG- FAO. The proposal from India was examined by the team of Dr Hans Dreyer, Director, Plant Production and Protection Division of FAO Rome (https://www.fao.org/3/mx753en/mx753en.pdf). The proposal was fine-tuned and fitted into the FAO proposal template with executive summary in the agenda format along with the suggested action by the Committee on Agriculture.
Source:- International Year of Millets – 2023, proposal from India – Application to UN adoption
