Bilateral meeting with H.E. Vitaly Koval, Minister for Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine

Rome - The FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, and H.E. Vitaly Koval, Minister for Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, met in Rome on the sidelines of the 2024 World Food Forum to discuss ways to further foster collaboration between FAO and Ukraine.

The Director-General welcomed the Minister and congratulated him on his recent appointment, noting that  FAO has had an active office in Ukraine since 2003 when the country became an FAO Member and since then collaboration has been growing, recently adding a big emergency component. The Director-General further noted that due to the current global geopolitical situation, it was challenging to mobilize all the resources required under the 2024 Emergency Response Plan for Ukraine to ensure the needed agricultural support, food production interventions, and infrastructure repairs.

The Minister thanked FAO for its continuous support, noting that through the assistance received by Ukrainian farmers, donors were also indirectly supporting other vulnerable countries, as Ukraine’s agriculture products were also being exported to countries in need. The Minister stated that the agriculture sector was still the backbone of the Ukrainian Economy, and it has managed to remain resilient to the shocks caused by the war, although its capacity to support households in rural areas was becoming limited.

The Minister further noted that Ukraine was not only focused on the current food security situation, but was also looking towards developing a recovery plan for post-war Ukraine, to include programmes on recovery of the agriculture sector.

In this regard, the Director-General reaffirmed FAO’s readiness to provide all the technical expertise needed to rebuild the agrifood system following a ceasefire or end of the war. The Director-General noted that recovery could also include addressing challenges linked to finding new export markets for agricultural products and developing value-added commodities.

Both agreed to continue to work together to ensure recovery of the agrifood system in Ukraine to achieve the SDGs and leaving no one behind.