For more than 50 years, the United States and Japan have enjoyed a partnership that has yielded more than $280 billion in sales of U.S. food and agricultural products to Japan, creating a relationship that has helped cater to the needs of Japanese consumers while fueling the U.S. economy.
To celebrate the success of this relationship, which also helped plant the seeds for the U.S. Grains Council 50 years ago, the Council is sponsoring the Global Food Security Symposium in Tokyo, kicking off the Partners-in-Agriculture event April 7.
“Humanity will need all the tools available to it in order to meet global food demands in this century,� said USGC Chairman Rick Fruth, who will be representing the Council at the event. “This symposium will examine what those tools are, how they can be used sustainably, and how the trade experience of the world’s two largest economies can leverage them to successfully feed the world.�
The symposium will also provide an opportunity to highlight the successful impact improved farming practices and technologies have made in producing the world’s food and how, when applied appropriately, such technology can provide the mechanism to mitigate long-term, intransient global hunger by providing economic opportunities in parts of the world thirsting for it.
Speakers at the symposium include:
- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack;
- Japans Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries the Honorable Hirotaka Akamatsu;
- State Secretary of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Honorable Koichi Takemasa;
- U.S. Ambassador to Japan John V. Roos; and
- Dr. Kenneth Quinn of the World Food Prize Foundation.
Written by Jodi Kiely, USGC Contributing Writer