President to receive the ‘Agricola Medal’ of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation

UACHTARAN na hÉireann, President Michael D. Higgins has been chosen by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to be the recipient of the organisation’s Agricola Medal.

The medal, which bears the Latin name for farmer, is conferred upon international figures who have undertaken outstanding efforts in advancing the cause of global food security, poverty alleviation and nutrition.

President Higgins, who will be the first Irish recipient of the medal, has been invited to receive the award by the Director-General of the FAO, Dr Qu Dongyu, who stated: “It would be my privilege and honour, in my capacity as Director-General, to present you with the prestigious FAO Agricola Medal in recognition of your contribution and commitment to the welfare of all peoples, your extraordinary support for FAO’s fundamental goal of attaining universal food security, and the pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

It is customary that the recipient of the medal provides their own choice of inscription text for the medal. The President is honoured to accept the Director-General’s invitation to receive the Agricola Medal and has asked for the inscription to read ‘Food Security as part of Universal Basic Services and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – the seeds of world peace’.

The vital need for food security, and the importance of moving past reactive emergency responses to tackling the underlying structural causes of hunger, has been a key theme of the President’s work.

The President has consistently raised the importance of food security, and the links between it and the interlocking global crises of global poverty, migration, debt and climate change in his meetings with global leaders in recent years. This included at his recent meetings with US President Joe Biden, His Holiness Pope Francis, and the Premier of the People’s Republic of China Li Qiang. It is also a topic which the President has repeatedly raised at the annual meetings of the Arraiolos Group of non-executive European Presidents.

In October 2023, President Higgins delivered two addresses on the topic of food security at the World Food Forum, hosted at the FAO’s headquarters in Rome, one at the Forum’s opening session as well as the keynote address at the Forum’s closing session. The President’s addresses in Rome built on a further two addresses which he delivered at the second Dakar Summit on food sovereignty and resilience in Senegal in January 2023.

The President has also written extensively on the topic in recent years, including reflecting on the repeated crises which have arisen since he first travelled to Somalia and saw first-hand the devastation of the famine in that country in 1992.

President Higgins will be presented with the Agricola Medal by Director-General Qu in a ceremony in Dublin later this year.

The key objectives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are the eradication of hunger and poverty alleviation worldwide.

The Agricola Medal was first awarded in 1977. The medals are intended ‘to give prominence to the role that the recipients have played in pursuing solutions for global food security and nutrition, and at the same time express the solidarity of the most eminent personalities of our times to the millions of people who suffer from hunger’.

The medal is usually presented in person by the Director-General of the FAO during a formal ceremony in the recipient’s country.

There have been 38 recipients of the medal to date. Previous recipients include His Holiness Pope John Paul II, President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, agronomist Dr Norman Borlaug, and a number of Heads of State, Heads of Government and experts from across the world.