The United Nation Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in close collaboration with partners WFP, IFAD and the World Bank, yesterday, held a day’s validation workshop on the Country Action Plan Identification Mission Report (CAPIMR) on the soaring food prices, at the Paradise Suites Hotel in Kololi.

The objective of the joint inter-agency mission assessment programme is to share, review and validate its finding with the aim to ensure that all stakeholder’s reach an agreement on the findings.

Declaring the workshop opened, Bakary Trawally, permanent secretary, Department of State for Agriculture thanked the donors for including The Gambian into the UN inter-agency assessment mission under the FAO Initiative on Soaring Food Prices (ISFP).

According to him, the government of The Gambia under President Jammeh’s leadership is highly committed towards modernising the agricultural sector, adding that all is geared towards achieving the goals of the Vision 2020 and the Silicon Valley.

PS Trawally took the opportunity to challenge participants to take the workshop seriously and come out with good recommendation on the way forward.

For his part, Malcolm Robert Duthie, FAO country representative, said the initiative of the workshop came as a result of the high food prices across the globe which have prompted the FAO together with partners to create the initiative on the soaring food prices to help the developing countries.

According to him, it is against this background that the government of The Gambia requested for assistance from the UN Inter-agency Assessment Mission to include the The Gambia in the list of developing countries to benefit from the initiative. He thanked The Gambia government for the bold step adding that the country has potentials to increase agriculture production to meet it’s growing demand as they have the river and land to increase production.