NEW DELHI: India will host the 32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists in New Delhi from 2nd to 7th August, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare announced Tuesday.

Agricultural economists from 75 countries will participate in this conference, which is held every three years in a different country, Professor Ramesh Chand, economist-member of NITI Aayog, said yesterday.

NITI Aayog is India’s nodal agency tasked with catalysing economic development. It is also the Indian government’s apex public policy think tank responsible for academic conferences supported by the state.

This year’s conference theme is ‘Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems.’ There will be ‘particular focus on the important role that the agricultural economics profession will need to play in addressing related interdisciplinary knowledge gaps and policy challenges,’ the Toronto-based International Association of Agricultural Economists said.

This Association has its genesis in a small meeting of a
gricultural economists held in Devon, England, in 1929. The Association was formally set up at a similar meeting the following year at Cornell University in New York state.

India last hosted this conference in 1958.

Shahidur Rashid, Director of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s South Asia office, said that facilitating the transformation to a sustainable food system is the most important goal of this year’s conference.

Source: Emirates News Agency