Tunisia is suffering heavily from the effects of climate change, which are severely impacting its water resources and, consequently, its grain harvest, Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries Abdelmonem Belati said on Friday on closing works of the Tunisian-Italian Forum on Food Security, hosted in Tunis on October 19-20. "The rainfall deficit that the country has been suffering for several years has caused a sharp drop in its water resources and its grain harvest for 2023, to 0.3 million tonnes compared with an average of around 1.2 to 1.5 million tonnes," he pointed out. Furthermore, with temperatures hovering around 50 degrees during the summer of 2023 in several regions of the country, surface water evaporation reached 900,000 m3/day, further complicating the country's water situation. In view of this situation, the Agriculture Minister underlined the need to scale up Tunisian-Italian cooperation in the water sector, and to encourage the sharing of experiences, expertise and technologies in order to improve the management of this vital resource, protect the agricultural sector and boost food security. "The Tunisian-Italian forum on food security offered an opportunity to share views on a number of vital sectors," he said, voicing wish that the forum's conclusions be implemented as soon as possible. Taking the floor, Italian Minister for Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests Francesco Lollobrigida underlined that the Forum had helped identify possible synergies between the two countries' agricultural sectors. He stated that his country is ready to share its experience in precision agriculture, intelligent irrigation and genetic improvement of fodder with Tunisia, so that it can address the major challenge of water scarcity. Speaking at the event, Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Antonio Tajani underscored the fact that cooperation between Tunisia and Italy "is global and cannot be reduced to the issue of migration." Tajani considered that the Tunisian-Italian Forum on Food Security "is just the beginning of a major cooperation between the two countries in the food security field," pointing out that this cooperation will cover building the resilience of the agricultural sector to climate change, boosting research- development in this sector, technology transfer and encouraging mutual investment in these fields, etc. He deemed "it crucial to involve the two countries' private sectors in efforts to achieve greater agricultural resilience to climate change."

Source: EN - Agence Tunis Afrique Presse