RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will join the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) member countries to observe the World Food Day today.

The Kingdomwide program will kick off in Riyadh with a workshop on “the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy” at the Ministry of Agriculture auditorium. Minister of Agriculture Fahd Balghonaim is slated to inaugurate the event, which will be followed by the opening of an exhibition to highlight Kingdom’s role in food production and its contribution to poor people in the developing countries through the World Food Program (WFP).

Participants in the workshop will include officials from the ministry, FAO, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the University of Al-Qassim and Alfaisal University. The UNDP resident representative Riad Musa is also slated to address the event.

“World Food Day provides an opportunity to highlight the plight of 862 million undernourished people in the world,” Abdullah Al-Ohaibi, coordinator of FAO Program in Saudi Arabia, told Arab News yesterday. He pointed out that global warming and the biofuel boom are now threatening to push the number of hungry to further up in decades to come.

He said the Kingdom, with its limited water resources, has been able to produce fruit and vegetables besides its annual output of one million tons of dates.

He commended the Kingdom’s overseas investment program for agricultural development.