FAO official wants greater urgency for Vision 2030

AN EXECUTIVE of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has called on local policymakers to use the regional conference set for March 5-8 in Montego Bay, St James, to provide the impetus for their activities. This is if the country is to achieve its national vision statement that Jamaica becomes ‘the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business’.

“The Sustainable Development Goals that all the countries have signed on to achieve, if we are really going to achieve them, really going to realise Vision 2030, this is going to require bold action. The pace that we are going at now, the work that we are putting in, is useful, but I really feel that there is need for a sense of urgency,” Dr Gillian Smith, acting country representative for Jamaica, Belize and The Bahamas, told a consultation workshop last Wednesday.

“We need to look at bigger impacts. We need to look at how we upscale what we are doing. There are wonderful examples, I’m sure ... of things that are happening that can help to move and drive Jamaica’s development agenda. They are not big enough yet, they are not coordinated enough. This is an opportunity for us to put some of those issues on the table. This is an opportunity for us to create groundswell in our dialogue,” Smith told the gathering at Knutsford Court Hotel, New Kingston.