Irish president to address opening session of World Food Forum in Rome

President Michael D Higgins will address the opening session of the World Food Forum later in Rome.

The president will also have a private audience with Pope Francis during a week of engagements in the Italian capital.

Mr Higgins will also meet the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, at the Quirinal Palace and hold bilateral meetings with the heads of each of the three Rome-based United Nations agri-food and food security organisations.

During his engagements in Rome, the president is expected to emphasise that in responding to food security challenges, it is essential to move past reactive emergency responses to tackling the underlying structural causes of hunger.

He will suggest that in order to deliver successful food systems, societies must recognise the links between food insecurity, global poverty, migration, debt and climate change.

He will also participate in a number of cultural engagements, including meeting the Irish community, laying a wreath to honour the late Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, and attending the exhibition Ireland And The Birth Of Europe at the Pontifical Irish College.

Earlier this year Mr Higgins highlighted the importance of food security at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska in Co Laois.

He said that making necessary changes to help the climate is not as simple as not eating meat.

He said that some people, who are under great pressure financially as a result of inflation, have become accustomed to “a cheap food policy where you have artificially reduced prices”.

He continued: “But in the same way I think people will be adjusting their own diets, but I don’t simplify it like that, it isn’t as simple as that.

“I think people are making choices that are responsible but there is no doubt whatsoever that we’re going to see big changes in diet.”