Dialogue sessions on climate change, food quality and safety issues, and food security indicators and policies at Food Security and Sustainable Development Forum

 Food Security and Sustainable Development Forum, organized by Quality Assurance Center at Damascus University, in cooperation with the Faculty of Agriculture, included three dialogue sessions with the participation of researchers, professors and specialists.

The first dialogue session of the Forum discussed the theme of "Climate-Smart Agriculture to Achieve Sustainable Agricultural Development and Food Security". Dr. Hussein Al-Mahasneh, a faculty member at the Department of Field Crops at the Faculty of Agriculture, presented a paper that addressed climate change, its causes and effects, the concept of climate adaptation, the reality of sustainable development and food security, in addition to the concept of climate-smart agriculture.

From Kuwait, Professor Abdullah Al-Gharib from the Arab Institute for Safety Sciences participated online with an intervention in which he emphasized the role of youth in the sustainable development process and achieving its goals as a vital, influential and effective element in shaping the future of their communities.

The second session of the Forum discussed the problems of food manufacturing.  During the session, Dr. Eng. Mohammed Al-Shihabi, Food Safety Consultant at EMBC, reviewed the most important topics raised for discussion by the researchers participating in the dialogue, focusing on the importance of food manufacturing as an important factor in the local product and the most important difficulties in securing the raw materials used in manufacturing, the laws and legislation related to food manufacturing and the importance of updating them, and the problems related to food quality and safety.

The third session focused on food security and its policies. Dr. Shabab Nasser from the Faculty of Agriculture at Damascus University discussed the dimensions of food security, its indicators, policies, and future estimates of the food security situation, and its determinants. He also touched on the national strategy to combat poverty, the national strategy for nutrition, the general framework of food security strategy, the difficulties that hinder its achievement, and the most prominent proposals that help achieve it.