The meeting was attended by the agriculture ministers of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. During the meeting, Tomar urged the member nations to work together in creating a comprehensive regional strategy to strengthen cooperation for the transformation of agriculture while addressing the meeting via video conference.
The minister also urged the member nations to adopt a supportive agricultural food system and a healthy diet for all, citing the significance of millet as a nutrient-dense food and the efforts made by India to promote millet and its products during the International Year of Millets - 2023.
He asked them to actively support India's campaign to promote millet as a food. In order to preserve agricultural biodiversity and lower the use of chemicals, Tomar suggested that natural and ecological farming should be encouraged. According to Tomar, initiatives under the "One Health" approach are also taking shape in India along with digital farming and precision farming.
In order to ensure food security, nutrition, environmental sustainability, and support for livelihoods, he emphasised the importance of cooperation in the agricultural and related sectors. For this to happen, it is necessary to increase technical and economic cooperation to deal with the challenges of climate change, agro-biodiversity, microbial preventive resistance under the "One Health" approach, and other programmes.
In order to improve regional cooperation between BIMSTEC nations for food security, peace, and prosperity in the region, Tomar reaffirmed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks from the 5th BIMSTEC Summit held in Colombo in March 2022.
The Action Plan for Strengthening BIMSTEC Agricultural Cooperation was adopted at the 2nd BIMSTEC Agriculture Ministerial Meeting (2023-2027). The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the BIMSTEC Secretariat have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, and it has been approved to include the livestock and fishing subsectors in the Agricultural Working Group. India's efforts to improve agricultural research and development cooperation as well as its awarding of six scholarships each for postgraduate and PhD programmes in agriculture were praised by BIMSTEC member nations.
Along with other senior Ministry officials, the meeting was attended by Kailash Choudhary, Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Research and Education (DARE).
The BIMSTEC organisation was founded in 1997. It consists of two South-East Asian nations, Myanmar and Thailand, as well as five South Asian nations: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
