President Michael D. Higgins has been chosen by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to receive the organisation’s Agricola Medal.
The medal, which bears the Latin name for farmer, is conferred upon international figures who have undertaken outstanding efforts in advancing the cause of global food security, poverty alleviation and nutrition.
President Higgins, who will be the first Irish recipient of the Agricola Medal, will be presented with the award by Director-General of the FAO, Dr. Qu Dongyu in a ceremony in Dublin later this year.
Dongyu said that the medal was being presented to President Higgins in recognition of his contribution and commitment to the welfare of all peoples, support for FAO’s fundamental goal of attaining universal food security, and the pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Agricola Medal
It is customary that the recipient of the Agricola Medal provides their own choice of inscription text for the medal.
President Higgins has asked for the inscription to read: “Food Security as part of Universal Basic Services and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – the seeds of world peace”.
The vital need for food security, and the importance of moving past reactive emergency responses to tackling the underlying structural causes of hunger, has been a key theme of the President’s work.
He has raised the importance of food security, and the links between it and global poverty, migration, debt and climate change in his meetings with global leaders in recent years.
This included 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 the President 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.
The President’s 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 also written extensively 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.