Press release from the IICA Montego Bay, Jamaica, October 26, 2009 (IICA). On Monday and Tuesday of this week (October 26-27), delegates from some 30 countries will be discussing the Hemispheric Ministerial Agreement Jamaica 2009, which the highest-level leaders of agriculture in the Americas are expected to adopt in this Caribbean city on Thursday. Grenada is represented at this meeting by its Ministerial Delegate, Mr. Daniel Lewis, Agronomist in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. This meeting kicks off the Week of Agriculture and Rural Life of the Americas Jamaica 2009, which is being held in the coastal city of Montego Bay. The forum of ministerial delegates - who are designated by the ministers of agriculture of the Americas - is formally known as the Group for the Implementation and Coordination of the Agreements on Agriculture and Rural Life (GRICA). On this occasion, the delegates are tasked with helping to achieve the main objective of the meeting: “Building Capacity for Enhancing Food Security and Rural Life in the Americas.” The activity was inaugurated by the host of the Week of Agriculture, the Minister of Agriculture of Jamaica, Christopher Tufton, and the Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Chelston W. D. Brathwaite. The countries designated the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of Jamaica, Donovan Stanberry, and the Ministerial Delegate of Guatemala, Aaron Velasquez as co-chairs of the GRICA. “We meet in the wake of a world food crisis that triggered a sharp spike in the prices of raw materials and increased concerns about global food security,” Minister Tufton said. Brathwaite, who has been at the helm of IICA for the past eight years, remarked that “without agriculture we will not be able to reduce rural poverty, so we must modernize the strategies for the sector as a matter of urgency.” He also highlighted the mandates on food security issued this year by the Heads of State and Government at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, which provided important new input for the work of the members of the GRICA. The delegates meeting in Montego Bay are responsible for coordinating the implementation of and follow-up to the presidential mandates and commitments - established at the summits of the Americas - and the hemispheric ministerial agreements on agriculture and rural life that are adopted at the Ministerial Meetings “Agriculture and Rural Life of the Americas.” They are also tasked with reaching agreement on proposals designed to update the content of those agreements. “The work of IICA is a key element in the efforts to strengthen the Summit of the Americas process and the agency’s multidimensional approach to agriculture is contributing to development,” said David Morris, Director of the Secretariat of the Summit of the Americas process of the Organization of American States (OAS), located in Washington D.C. (They will engage in two days of discussions to enable the ministers of agriculture of the hemisphere to adopt the Hemispheric Agreement Jamaica 2009).