This special report shows how today's unsustainable and inequitable food systems are a key contributor to a spiralling debt crisis. Import dependencies, extractive financial flows, boom-bust commodity cycles, and climate-vulnerable food systems are combining to destabilize the finances of the world's poorest countries. It calls for comprehensive debt relief in...

Even seemingly simple tasks, like raising the humble earthworm, can be done in more ways than one, however all variations must follow certain basic principles. In a video from Bangladesh, villagers show the audience how to raise earthworms in cement rings, sunk into the soil. The floor is covered with a...

The brief reports on the findings of a farmer-level survey conducted in the context of the pilot phase of the UNDFF global consultation of family farmers. The purpose of the survey was to monitor the situation of family farming and identify challenges faced by family farmers and small-scale producers in...

The need for better understanding and conservation of wild plant resources with potential for domestication or utilization in crop improvement has been highlighted in recent years. Botanical resources such as herbaria, databases, and floras offer an information-rich platform from which to select species of interest based on desirable traits. To...

La presente nota de política presenta los principales resultados de un estudio diagnóstico cuyo objetivo principal fue identificar y describir las percepciones, barreras y/o motivaciones de los estudiantes beneficiarios del Programa de Alimentación Escolar (PAE) en Chile y sus familias para consumir frutas y verduras. Los resultados del estudio reflejan,...

There is a general lack of engagement from grain farmers to crop diversification, namely due to limited markets and outlets for harvested products. On the flip side, within the dairy sector, there is reliance on imported soybean and it is currently hard to substitute this cheap source of protein with...

Water is the foundation of everything: without safe, reliable, and accessible water resources, communities, ecosystems, and economies cannot successfully adapt to change.   Meet Aysha Bsharat, a 44-year-old single mother raising two young boys in the Tammoun area, the south of Tubas in the West Bank, Palestine. Aysha has dedicated her life...

Forestry and agroforestry education and extension programmes for forest and farm communities have not kept up with needs in many places. However, the success of achieving international sustainability goals and implementing global commitments with respect to sustainable production, halting land degradation, ecosystem restoration and climate change mitigation is contingent on...

The year was 1998. Lydia Sasu, the notable personality being profiled in this column, was then a civil servant in the Department of Women in Agriculture in the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture and also the Coordinator of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign of the Food and Agriculture Organization...

In Colombia, the coastal town of Buenaventura boasts one of the country’s busiest ports. Local communities rely to a great extent on fisheries and aquaculture to make a living, and women make up a large part of the workforce. These women fish sellers – known as the Platoneras - work...

Food starts with soils, and as the target date to accomplish the SDGs grows closer, it is more urgent than ever to reverse soil degradation and tackle its effects on agrifood systems. This booklet aims to review the role of soil fertility in producing sufficient, safe, and more nourishing food...

This publication offers a synthesis of the major factors at play in the global food and agricultural landscape. Statistics are presented in four thematic chapters, covering the economic importance of agricultural activities, inputs, outputs and factors of production, their implications for food security and nutrition and their impacts on the...

The importance of the collective management of immaterial resources is a key variable in the valorisation of products in a post-industrial economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how, in post-industrial economies, it is possible to devise alternative forms of mediation between producers and consumers, such as organic...

Competitiveness defined as the ability of companies to reach the market and stay in it within the framework of competition, is a necessity for any productive sector. When reviewing the literature about the competitiveness of agricultural production, no study was found that is applied to a species such as the...

The need to secure food supplies for a rapidly growing world population (by 2050 there will be an additional two billion mouths to feed) presents us with an immense task, if only because of climate change and the overwhelming demands we are placing on the natural environment. Producing healthy and...

This essay emphasises the significance of taking action to address the enormous and severe gender disparity in agriculture. It is still a cliché that women are capable of toiling the land but not of owning it. Every day, women in agriculture confront the derogatory stereotype that farming is a man's...

Momentum is growing for increased South-South cooperation to meet and overcome the challenges of poverty and food insecurity in the Asia-Pacific region, experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said here today on the sidelines of a three-day multi partner EXPO on South-South and Triangular...

La agricultura familiar en la producción de hortalizas en América Latina y el Caribe (ALC) se caracteriza por una producción tradicional de campo abierto, altamente vulnerable a las condiciones adversas del medio ambiente (altas y bajas temperaturas, sequías, inundaciones, fotoinhibición, heladas, granizo, etc.), poco tecnificada y carente de enfoque empresarial....

Guyana’s agrifood systems are facing an increasing level of risk: rising sea-levels are eroding its coastal area, where much of the agricultural activity is located; recent off-shore oil discoveries threaten to crowd-out non-oil sectors; and a dependency on a limited number of agricultural export commodities exposes the agricultural sector to...

This master's degree is carried out in collaboration with the International University of Andalusia, the University of Cordoba, and the Pablo de Olavide University and aims to strengthen a critical and complex perspective and praxis on agri-food systems and forms of agroecological social transition through forms of collective social action and public policies. The application process...