The acting Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, highlighted the value of CIHEAM for the population of the countries of the Mediterranean area by promoting cooperation in the field of education or research focused on training rural youth and women.
The International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM), an organization of which Spain is a part, promotes the sustainable development of the primary sector, as well as social cohesion, elements that facilitate the stability and growth of the Mediterranean countries.
This entity has four Mediterranean agronomic institutes -Bari (Italy), Chania (Greece), Montpellier (France) and Zaragoza (Spain) – which are increasingly accessed by students and trained as entrepreneurs in sustainable agricultural and fishing activities. .
Planas has emphasized the work of these institutes to facilitate access to the labor market of the Mediterranean youth as an essential tool to maintain the population in rural areas.
The Mediterranean area, the minister has attracted attention, has special social and geographical characteristics that make it more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
To address the challenges of the Mediterranean basin such as food security, as well as youth employment or migration, centers such as CIHEAM play a strategic role.
From Spain, assured Planas will support the need to strengthen its international visibility to intensify development cooperation projects as key elements, through training activities, which result in the revitalization of rural populations in the Mediterranean area .
It has valued that the next Summit of the 13 Ministers of Agriculture (Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and Turkey) of the CIHEAM, to be held in Tunisia on the 4th and November 5 see about young people and rural women. These are two of the strategic themes of this Government's policy, together with the digitalization and sustainable use of water in agriculture through irrigation, according to Planas.
In this regard, he stressed that we must create opportunities in the rural world so that young people and women are not forced to emigrate. Therefore, digitalization, capable of attracting young talent, "making entrepreneurship more attractive in the agricultural sector and in rural areas", is another of the strategic lines that is being promoted by this Ministry.
Digital solutions improve the living conditions in the villages and slow down the processes of depopulation. The Mediterranean peoples can not miss the train of agrarian modernization, stressed the minister.
The CIHEAM was created in 1962. Currently, its president is the Moroccan Mohammed Sadiki and its general secretary, the Spanish Placido Plaza, positions that were elected, respectively, in December and in February for the next four years.