Currently serving as Ambassador at Large for Global Food Security at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of the Government of Spain.

Former Director General for Sustainable Development Policies from 2018 to 2021. In this position, he has been lead author and strategist of the 2030 Agenda Implementation Action Plan of Spain, coordinating the Spanish Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum. Lead author of the Spanish Cooperation Joint Response Strategy to COVID-19 pandemic.

He served in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary General from 2011 to 2017, including as Coordinator of the UN Secretary-General High Level Task Force on Global Food Security and as Team Leader of the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Food and Nutrition Security from 2016 to 2017, based in Rome. In this capacity, he was representative of the UN SG at the Advisory Committee of the Committee on World Food Security and at the Steering Committee of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. He was part of the Milano Group on Sustainable Food Systems convened by UN SG Ban Ki-Moon in 2015 and made seminal contributions to linking ending hunger, poverty and climate-compatible sustainable food systems. Senior policy advisor on sustainable development to the UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor for the Post2015 Development Agenda Ms Amina J Mohammed from 2012 to 2016, leading on food security, agriculture and food systems, financing and climate change. Renowned as being part of the team facilitating the process leading to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, he was instrumental on crafting Ban Ki-Moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge and SDG 2.

Before joining the UN, he was Deputy-Director General of Development Policies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Spain from 2007-2010, leading on Spain’s global response to the global food crisis. He coordinated the 2009 Madrid High Level Meeting “Food Security for All” and substantially contributed to the reform of the Committee on World Food Security. In this position, he was lead author of the 2009-2012 Spanish Cooperation Master Plan and was instrumental on the set up of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), the L´Aquila Food Security Initiative, the UN Fund for the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and the „Spanish Fund for Cooperation on Water and Sanitation“.

Full time Professor of Development Theory and Planning at the School of Agricultural Engineering and Environment at the Technological University of Valencia UPV (2000-2007) and Director of its Development Cooperation Centre (2004-2007). He founded and coordinated the Development Studies and Applied Ethics Research Group, his research and practice focuses on Sen‘s Capability Approach, development methodology, climate and sustainable development.

An engineer by training, he holds a nationally awarded Ph. D on development planning and management. He is author or co-author of more than 50 publications including journal research papers, 3 books, book chapters and op-eds with a focus on rural development, climate and development effectiveness. With field level experience at project, program and policy levels on agriculture, rural development and renewable energy, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Morocco, and Argentina, he has been advisor to national and subnational governments, social movements and NGOs on rural development planning, management and sustainable development policies.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability and Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She is an expert on the global governance of problems that arise at the intersection of the global economy, food security, and the natural environment. Her recent research projects examine the political economy of financial actors in food systems, the politics of trade and food security, and corporate concentration in the agrifood sector. She has also researched governance responses to food crises, the political economy of food assistance, and global environmental policy.

Professor Clapp has published widely across a range of top journals and presses. Her most recent books include Food, 3^rd Edition (Polity, 2020), Speculative Harvests: Financialization, Food, and Agriculture (Fernwood Press, 2018), Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of International Food Aid (Cornell University Press, 2012), Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment, 2^nd Edition (MIT Press, 2011), and Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance (MIT Press, 2009).

Professor Clapp is Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). Her research has been recognized with numerous awards, including: Distinguished Scholar award of the Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies Association; Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and recipient of the Innis-Gérin Medal for contributions to Social Sciences; Killam Research Fellowship; Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship; the and the Canadian Association for Food Studies Award for Excellence in Research.

Education degree:

• General Secondary Education (Secondary school in Myangad soum, Khovd province in Mongolia)
• The University of Finance and Economics, Mongolia /Bachelor of Economics (Economist and business researcher)
• National Academy of Governance (Master of Management)

Experience:

• Minister of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry since July 2020
• Head of Government Agency for Policy Coordination on State Property from 2019 to 2020
• State Secretary of Ministry of Energy from 2016 to 2019
• Director-General for Public Investment Department of Ministry of Finance from 2015 to 2016
• Executive director and CEO in private sector from 2001 to 2014

Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). She received her MSc and PhD degrees in Development Sociology from Cornell University. She has published extensively based on her interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative research on land and water policy, property rights, governance arrangements, gender analysis, and the impact of agricultural research on poverty, drawing on field work in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. She co-led the program on Governance of Natural Resources under the CGIAR program on Policies, Institutions and Markets and past president of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), and recipient of the Elinor Ostrom Award on Collective Governance of the Commons 2019 Senior Scholar award.

Mr. Ibrahim Turay is the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR). Before his appointment, he was working as Fisheries Expert and Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist in the Regional Coordination Unit of the World Bank funded West Africa Regional Fisheries Program based at the Permanent Secretariat of the Sub Regional Fisheries Commission in Dakar, Senegal. Mr. Turay worked for eight years at the Fisheries Commission providing technical support to ten coastal countries in West Africa on fisheries governance reform, project implementation, as well as monitor progress and collect relevant data on project results framework.

He also worked for more than 15 years as technical staff in the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources in Sierra Leone and served as Officer in-charge of the Southern Province for fisheries and aquaculture development and later as head of the Statistics and Research Unit of the MFMR. He has a M.Sc. in Fisheries and Marine Resources from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and a Postgraduate Diploma from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada in Ocean Governance: Policy, Law and Management – United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

As the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, He is currently assisting the Minister to implement strategic actions of the Fisheries Policy with a view to conserving and sustainably utilizing the marine resources in a manner that is ecologically effective, economically efficient and socially viable. The outcomes of the strategic actions respond directly to the vision of the New Direction’s Agenda which is to conserve and sustainably manage the marine resources for social and economic diversification.

Mr. Maximo Torero Cullen is the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He joined the Organization in January 2019 as Assistant Director-General for the Economic and Social Development Department. Prior to joining FAO, he was the World Bank Group Executive Director for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay since November 2016 and before the Bank Mr. Torero led the Division of the Markets, Trade, and Institutions at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). His major research work lies mostly in analyzing poverty, inequality, importance of geography and assets (private or public) in explaining poverty, and in policies oriented towards poverty alleviation based on the role played by infrastructure, institutions, and on how technological breakthroughs (or discontinuities) can improve the welfare of households and small farmers. His experience encompasses Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.

Mr. Torero, a national of Peru, holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of the Pacific, Lima, Peru. He is a professor on leave at the University of the Pacific, Perú, and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at University of Bonn, Germany, and has also published in top journals (QJE, Econometric Theory, AER-Applied Microeconomics, RSTAT, Labor Economics and many other top journals).

Mr. Torero has received in 2000 the Georg Foster Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, won the Award for Outstanding Research on Development given by the Global Development Network, twice, in 2000 and in 2002, and received the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole in 2014.

For more information, visit: maximotorero.com

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 

• Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Minister, September 2021- Present)
• Agriculture and Rural Development Agency (General Director, July 2017 – September 2021)
• Financial Services Volunteer Corps/USAID (Country Director, October 2013 – July 2017)
• Tirana Bank (Marketing and PR Manager, March 2011 – September 2013)
• Agna Group On Time Concept (General Manager, April 2009 – March 2011)
• Agna Group (Diageo Marketing Manager, November 2007- April 2009)
• Performance Research, USA (Researcher, November 2005 – May 2007)
• Financial Services Volunteer Corps/USAID (Program Officer, November 2001- August 2005)
• World Learning/USAID Tirana (Program Coordinator, September 2000 – March 2001)

EDUCATION 

• Harvard Business School, 2018
• Leading Economic Growth
• Harvard Business School Publishing, 2012
• Piraeus Bank Group Management E-Academy, January – December 2012
• The University of Akron, College of Business Administration – Ohio, USA (MBA – Management & Supply Chain Management, August 2005 – May 2007), AWARDS: Fulbright Scholarship, US State Department
• University of Tirana, Faculty of Economics – Tirana, Albania (B.A. Business Administration, Management, June 2000)

• Professional Farmer
• Current Farmers’ union “INGABO Syndicate’s” Chairperson
• Current Agripool member (Worldwide Agri-experts’ hub working under Agriterra-Ducth Agri-Agency)
• Long term (above 20 years) experience in national and regional farmers’ organizational leadership
• Various conferences,trainings and study toursattendance on different themes organized by United Nations, IFAD, FAO, Ministry of Agriculture in Rwanda,International Agri-Agencies, and Farmers organizations
• Awardee as a top winner in different Agri-competitions such as one jointly organized by “Famille Terre” and UPADI from Canada and the one organized by “Flandre Orientale”-Belgium province

Perla Alvarez Britez, mujer campesina paraguaya, docente de la lengua guaraní, militante de la CONAMURI, Organización de Mujeres Campesinas e Indígenas, Referente de la CLOC – Vía Campesina y de la Alianza por la Soberanía Alimentaria, desde donde integra el Mecanismo de la Sociedad Civil del CSA.