More than 50 African Ministers of Agriculture and related sectors from FAO Member countries, high-level technical experts, representatives of regional organizations and institutions, the civil society and about 100 accredited media gather in Abidjan this week to take stock of progress made in food security and nutrition on the continent...

FAO has focused and integrated its work in the Region through three Regional Initiatives. The Initiatives respond to the priorities of member-states and will achieve demonstrable impact in a time bound manner, whilst responding to FAO’s Strategic Objectives. In Africa, the Regional Initiatives were developed based on an in-depth cross-sectoral...

The facts speak for themselves: more than half the global population now live in urban areas. According to forecasts, three-quarters of the global population, i.e. around 7 billion people, will be living in cities by 2050. Alongside globalisation, urbanisation is indisputably one of the main trends of our time. Everywhere,...

Since 2012, FAO has been working with the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) on a joint programme for  Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women...

Indigenous women leaders from different regions of Peru met in the city of Lima to participate in the face-to-face seminar of the Leadership School of Indigenous Women, a joint initiative of the International Indigenous Women Forum (IIWF-FIMI) and FAO. 13 indigenous women representatives of organizations related to women empowerment, nutrition, agriculture...

A Extensão Rural, responsável em levar assistência técnica, tecnologias e políticas públicas para famílias rurais que trabalham com as atividades agropecuárias, completa 50 anos no Amazonas. Na próxima sexta-feira, 2 de dezembro, o Instituto de Desenvolvimento Agropecuário e Florestal Sustentável do Estado do Amazonas (Idam), que em 2016, atendeu 51,3...

La production industrielle d'huile de palme s'est étendue à travers le monde au cours du dernier siècle, en Asie d'abord et en Amérique latine ensuite. Le développement de palmiers à huile à haut rendement et l'émergence de nouvelles techniques de transformation—qui ont modifié le traditionnel liquide rouge et visqueux en...

Em 2010, no Brasil, 30,4% das mulheres com 16 anos ou mais não tinham nenhum rendimento. Entre as pessoas sem remuneração, o maior peso estava entre as rurais com 32,3% de acordo com o Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Há dois anos e meio, as agricultoras familiares de um...

Rwanda is the first country in the world where women hold a parliamentary majority and new laws have given women rights to land, employment opportunities and education. Now, in the most remote parts of the country, gender equality is going a long way to reducing poverty.

The strongest El Niño weather episode in the last several decades has caused repeated crop failure, decimated livestock herds and driven some 10.2 million people across Ethiopia into food insecurity, FAO reported as it presented its emergency response plan to urgently protect livestock and rebuild crop production in the Horn...

Fundatia ADEPT Transilvania is a landscape stewardship NGO, registered as a charity in 2004 in Romania and in the UK. ADEPT has been working for 10 years to protect the nature-rich, farmed landscapes of Transylvania, and to support the traditional farming communities who have created them over centuries and who...

From our field visits to Ndian Town, Fabe, Meangwe II and Ikondo-Kondo resettlement, we witnessed and heard about the tactics and strategies used by oil palm companies. The devastating impacts that plantations have had in other countries are more or less reflected in this part of Cameroon. We witnessed how...

n September 2015, members of the UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030. These goals are a continuation of the Millennium Development Goals, which ended on 2015.Sustainable development is defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without harming the capacity of future generation to meet their needs. It focuses...

En el marco de las elecciones presidenciales y parlamentarias del 2016, cuya iniciativa tiene como antecedentes los proyectos “Elecciones 2011” y “Elecciones 2006”, el Consorcio de Investigación Económica y Social (CIES), el Centro de Investigación de la Universidad del Pacífico (CIUP) y la Escuela de Gobierno y Políticas Públicas de...

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defines pulses as legumes with dry, edible seeds that have low fat content such as chickpeas, kidney beans, butter beans, black eyed peas, lentils, pigeon beans and cow peas among others. “Pulses are the key to food security and nutrition in Africa, taking...

Although smallholder farmers produce most of the developing world’s food, they also make up the majority of people living in poverty. Smallholder farmers are key to addressing many of today’s social, economic and environmental challenges. However, they need help to overcome the substantial barriers that prevent them from profiting fully...

This report presents the findings of the EIP-AGRI Focus Group (FG) on New Entrants to Farming: lessons to foster innovation and entrepreneurship, which was established under the European Innovation Partnership Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI). New entrants are widely recognised as important to the ongoing vitality and competitiveness of the...

A Reunião Especializada sobre Agricultura Familiar (REAF) do Mercosul é um fórum de diálogos políticos entre governos e movimentos sociais para a produção de políticas públicas. Ademais, a REAF também é um ator coletivo que domina capacidades institucionais, ocupando uma posição-chave na formulação da agenda das políticas para a agricultura...

In 2010, severe flooding killed nearly 2 000 people in Pakistan and wiped out 1.6 million homes. Whole villages were submerged, and families lost not only their homes, but also their livestock and standing crops – 2.4 million hectares of soon-to-be-harvested crops were destroyed, and estimated agriculture losses stood at...

 Throughout history, the ‘milpa’ has been the basis of Mesoamerican agriculture. The milpa is an agroecological practice where maize (Zea mays), edible gourds (Cucurbita spp), and beans (Phaseolus spp) are intercropped in association with woody, medicinal, and fodder plants, as well as fruit trees. Maize is more than a crop...