Achieving food security for all is at the heart of FAO's efforts – to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. FAO’s mandate is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the...

FAO’s water and income diversification projects have become instrumental to tackle the negative impacts of El Niño induced drought for pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in the Afar Region of north eastern Ethiopia. FAO supports the Afar regional government’s effort to improve the livelihood of pastoral and semi-pastoral households through animal...

Ten Farmers from Liberia are currently in The Gambia for a 6-day exchange visit of smallholders and community-based forest and farm producer organizations (FFPOs) on multi-stakeholder policy platforms, on community forest management.

La production agricole de la province du Katanga est en baisse et ne permet pas de subvenir aux besoins alimentaires de sa population de 9,6 Millions d'habitants (2009) dont 70,2% vivent en milieu rural. Les besoins en maïs pour satisfaire la demande sont estimés à 860 633 tonnes (plan quinquennal...

Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture: Illustrating the use of two wheel tractor in smallholder farming

Mechanization covers all levels of farming and processing technologies, from simple and basic hand tools to more sophisticated and motorized equipment. It eases and reduces hard labour, relieves labour shortages, improves productivity and timeliness of agricultural operations, improves the efficient use of resources, enhances market access and contributes to mitigating...

Dans le cadre du renforcement de la résilience à travers l’amélioration des moyens d’existence des communautés pastorales, la FAO met en œuvre, depuis 2014, une activité de production locale et d’utilisation de Blocs Multi-nutritionnels (BMNs) dans ses zones d’intervention notamment dans les Wilayas du Trarza, Brakna, Gorgol et Assaba. Dans...

The FAO Youth Mobility, Food Security and Rural Poverty Reduction (RYM) project aims at mitigating distress economic mobility in Tunisia and Ethiopia. With the support of the Italian Development Cooperation, the project will promote innovative mechanisms and rural development strategies with the objective of mitigating distress migration for rural youth...

In Zimbabwe, small-scale farmers are contributing immensely to the agricultural production of the country. Since Independence, they have been the main players in the production of crops like cotton and maize and have lately even taken over tobacco production. They are not only growing food to feed themselves; they also...

Just one year ago, world leaders committed to working towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) designed to change the course of the 21st century and address challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, education, etc. All these objectives are inextricably linked, and the success of one often depends on...

L’agriculture et le secteur rural jouent un rôle primordial dans le processus de développement des pays à base agricole. Cette fonction ne peut être assurée qu’à l’aide de politiques publiques qui tiennent compte de la diversité et de la complexité des milieux ruraux. Le préalable est donc d’avoir des connaissances...

For the past half century agricultural innovation has denied a voice to the many groups who work outside the profession of science – farmers, food providers, women and the urban poor. The value of their expertise gained through practical experience must be recognised in the production and validation of knowledge....

This edition of the RAF Newsletter is a special coverage from FAO-RAF that takes into account activities marking the 29th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa held in Abidjan. It presents to readers pictorial narratives and captions of the conference with key quotes from key personalities of the...

Organic Agriculture (OA) is a rapidly growing sector in Africa, with strong links to economic and sociocultural development in the continent (Willer and Kilcher, 2012; Auerbach, 2013). OA can also be seen as a relevant tool to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2, 12, 13 and 15 on sustainable...

While agro-chemicals such as pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides are often promoted as inputs that increase agricultural productivity by limiting a range of pre-harvest losses, their use may have negative human health and labor productivity implications. We explore the relationship between agro-chemical use and the value of crop output at the...

Floods, droughts, heat waves, cold spells, and other natural disasters are large sources of risk for farmers. For instance, in semiarid areas of India, 89 percent of farming households cited drought as the largest risk to agricultural production. Climate change may make weather patterns more extreme and unpredictable, further exposing...

Cette année le 8 mars a eu un accent particulier. Et cela pour deux raisons. La première, les autorités ont placé la commémoration sous le thème «Entrepreneuriat agricole des femmes : obstacles, défis et perspectives». Elles sont allées plus loin que le thème de la journée internationale qui est «Planète 50-50 d’ici 2030 :...

Pulses have a huge share in Ethiopia’s agriculture crop production. As figures show, Ethiopia annually produces over 400 000 metric tons of chickpea, which places the country among the top ten largest chickpea producers in the world. About five million Ethiopian smallholder farmers are relying on the production of pulses for...

Malawi is a small landlocked country in southern Africa, bordered by Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. The majority of Malawians are smallholder farmers, who grow crops for both food and income. More than half of the Malawian population lives in poverty, and the rate of food insecurity is very high. Typical...

This scoping exercise was carried on to deepen our understanding of the current context of seed use, main crops and varieties in the research localities, in order to gather evidence of the ongoing importance of farmer seed systems in the agricultural practices and livelihoods of smallholder farmers, to identify cases...