President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins is set to receive the Agricola Medal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) at a ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin on Friday, June 7.
The medal bears the Latin name for farmer, and is presented to international figures who have undertaken “outstanding efforts” in advancing the cause of global food security, poverty alleviation and nutrition.
President Higgins will be the first Irish recipient of the Agricola Medal and will be presented with the award by the director-general of the FAO, Dr. Qu Dongyu.
In inviting the president to receive the award, Director-General Qu described his support for FAO’s goal of attaining universal food security as “extraordinary”.
It is customary that the recipient of the medal provides their own choice of inscription text for the medal.
President Higgins has asked for the inscription to read the following: “Food Security as part of Universal Basic Services and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – the seeds of world peace”.
President Higgins has consistently raised the importance of food security, and the links between it and the crises of global poverty, migration, debt and climate change in his meetings with global leaders in recent years.
He raised the issues at his recent meetings with US President Joe Biden, Pope Francis, and the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Li Qiang.
It is also a topic which President Higgins 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.
President Higgins’ 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 written 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.