Ministers and senior officials from 44 countries are in Hanoi Monday at the start of a five-day conference organized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The FAO says the agenda calls for in-depth discussions on policy and regulatory issues, including the state of food and agriculture in the Asia-Pacific region, and an initiative to map food security and nutrition actions.

Later this week, ministers will review a report on measures to speed up progress toward the goal of cutting hunger levels in half in Asia-Pacific by 2015. That target was set at a World Food Summit in 1996.