 The World Food Day is celebrated globally every year on October 16th. This year, the focus is on the importance of water and having access to water. The theme is water is life, water is food, leave no one behind. The theme highlights the necessity of water for life and our continued existence. Further, it underscores the value of water and its contribution to nutrition and that everyone should have access to water, not just in terms of supply, but to a quality product. Based on climate and geographical conditions, we are aware of the inequity in the availability and distribution of water. The line, leave no one behind, reminds us of our moral, civic and humane duty to ensure that every community is endowed with adequate water to assist in meeting the basic requirements to enjoy a decent standard of living. Water is also needed to build and sustain livelihoods and one of the main ingredients in the production process. The Water Resource Management Agency is under the portfolio of the Ministry of Agriculture and is responsible for the management of freshwater resources islandwide. Recently, our water policy was updated to better provide for management and regulation of this resource to ensure inclusion of all users including water service providers, farmers, persons involved in the construction tourism sectors, residents and particularly the marginalized in our society. It is therefore critical to ensure that we practice water conservation measures in order to sustain this resource which has now become a scarce commodity in many areas. We have also noticed a move towards and an interest in food production systems using water. This year, although the emphasis is on water and its interrelated linkages, I wish to take the opportunity to inform on some major policies that we are working on at the Ministry of Agriculture. The Ministry has completed the update of its Food and Nutrition Policy and Strategy for 2023-2025. This update includes measures to deal with post-COVID-19 challenges, food security, food availability, access to food and food affordability. We have with the assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO completed our Agri-Food Transformation Policy 2023-2030. Beyond the normal policy objective, the document provides guidance on dealing with long-standing issues such as land tenure, land rights, retention of land for agriculture, strategies to inform food production losses and promote food substitution. The Ministry has also committed to sub-regional and regional undertakings to address food security. At the OECS level, we have committed to implementing key activities under the seven pillars of the Food Agriculture Systems Transformations Strategy FAST, including collaboration on investment in agriculture, improvement of agriculture infrastructure and leveraging innovation and technology. At the regional level, we have joined the CARICUM 25x25 initiative where St. Lucia has pledged to reduce its food import bill by 25% by 2025. Currently, we have identified major opportunities to reduce imports in meats, especially chicken and pork and agro-processed foods. We thank all our stakeholders for their support and contributions to the agricultural sector as we seek to collectively enhance our food security. I wish to take this opportunity to appeal to you, everyone in this country who consumes water to do so responsibly in terms of reducing wastage and taking the necessary steps to conserve water so that we do not deplete our water resources to the point of no return. Let us ensure that our actions contribute to sustainable use of water not only for ourselves, but the future generations. As part of our World Food Day 2023 celebrations, the ministry will be hosting a cocoa festival in Souffre on Sunday 15th 2023 from 10am. There will be a host of cocoa byproducts on display and on sale to promote local use and awareness. This will be a family event filled with live entertainment and educational material on the agricultural sector. I encourage everyone to participate. I also want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a wonderful World Food Day 2023. God bless and thank you.