The partnership between Kazakhstan and FAO has been constantly evolving since the country became a member of the Organization in 1997. Kazakhstan has recently increased its emphasis on investments in agriculture, forestry and rural development, and aims to modernize the sector while transitioning to a green economy. FAO technical assistance...

An international film festival in the Slovak Republic bucks that stereotype, bringing agricultural production into cinemas and making it understandable and entertaining for everyone. Now in its 31st year, Agrofilm provides an opportunity to see feature films, documentaries and short videos on agriculture, rural development and nutrition topics. Audiences gain insights...

In every mountain region, soils constitute the foundation for agriculture, supporting essential ecosystem functions and food security. Mountain soils benefit not only the 900 million people living in the world’s mountainous areas but also billions more living downstream.Soil is a fragile resource that needs time to regenerate. Mountain soils are...

The four Central Asian countries mentioned are heavily agrarian societies and have a low income per capita, except for Turkmenistan due to its large oil and gas revenues. The region is characterised by mountainous terrain and dry areas. The climate is continental, with cold winters and dry, hot summers. There...

Farmers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are constantly innovating, adapting their farming techniques to cope with unfavourable weather or environmental conditions. But their efforts are far from systematic, and there is little government support for what they do. A discussion at the 39th session of the European Commission on Agriculture,...

For several years, insuring harvests against the climate hazards that regularly destroy farmers’ crops in developing countries has for several years been a major tool in the fight against poverty, mainly in Africa and Asia, where between 400 and 500 million farmers survive on very low incomes. This system, which...

Se presentan experiencias de adaptación a la variabilidad climática por parte de las sociedades andinas, que podrían servir para la adaptación al cambio climático en ecosistemas de montaña andinos y tecnologías de adaptación al cambio climático a partir de experiencias iniciales de la institución Soluciones Prácticas en ecosistemas de montaña...

The sector of organic agriculture is continuously developing, involving more and more new enterprises, but the number of certified organic farms has stabilized, and in 2013 it reached 3473 farms. Lately, the areas of agricultural land used by organic farms show a stable growing trend. In 2013, similar to other...

San Isidro is an indigenous community in Ecuador’s central Andes that collectively built and manages an irrigation pipeline. The pipeline has brought life back to family farming and created more space for the community to protect the páramo, a source of water and life for farming communities and urban residents...

South-eastern Transylvania is one of Europe’s most important natural and cultural landscapes, supporting many rare habitats and fauna and flora species including some of the most significant areas of wildflower-rich grasslands in Europe. This high nature value farmed landscape is the result of good husbandry over hundreds of years, and...

El presente artículo analiza las características y condiciones que una propuesta de innovación tecnológica debería tener para garantizar que la ganadería lechera sea un instrumento importante en la superación de la pobreza en los productores de zonas altoandinas como los de La Paz en Bolivia. Para esto el autor analiza...

Agriculture plays an important role in social stability of the Kyrgyz Republic. More than a half of the population lives in rural area and their income is strongly linked to agricultural activities. The level of poverty among the rural population (41.4 percent) is much higher than urban areas (28. 5...

The Europe and Central Asia region (ECA) has achieved Millennium Development Goal 1C, to halve the proportion of undernourished people, with undernourishment at less than 5 percent in the region since 2010-12, the lowest of all five FAO regions. All countries in the region have made considerable progress in reducing...

The transition from Socialism to Capitalism occurred in many countries worldwide, but nowhere was it so sharp as in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Many researchers studied this process since the fall of the Berlin Wall in the autumn of 1989. Twenty-five years later, an international workshop was...

Summer pasture farming i Norway, short introduction

Small family farms are in general extensively managed in Estonia and are in general structured in a way which facilitates outdoor systems (e.g. pastures convenient to the animal housing). Having said that, there are no specific conditions in the Pillar 1 payment rules which would exclude intensive or indoor farming...

Approximately 38% of the EU budget (equivalent to 0.4% of the Union’s GDP) is spent on agriculture and rural development. This pooling of resources at EU level ensures efficient and effective spending that avoids distorting the internal market and delivers a wide range of public goods. It is much more...

Since the mid-term review, the French government has had the objective of maintaining grass-based livestock systems, and sheep and goat systems in particular. This has been translated into significant financial transfers from arable farms to the livestock sector. The new CAP continues this policy in favour of livestock systems, through...

Ireland is a single payment region on paper. However, the convergence process will not be completed by 2019 (the Department commitment is that no-one will have a payment rate below 60% of the 2019 national average by that time) and payment rates over the national average will only be reduced...

In Austria, apart from corn salads, hardly any organic vegetables are available during the winter from domestic production. As a result, most of the vegetables on sale are imported or grown through high-energy intensive production. To address this problem, a project has been developed called winter harvest: seasonal, energy-extensive and...