In 1989, a disease outbreak left cocoa plants and production in Brazil’s eastern state, Bahia, fully devastated. The land became abandoned until a group of rural farmers, who used to work on those fields, saw the untapped potential and rehabilitated it. Today, the Brazilian short movie “Two rivers – Cocoa...

Breeding and raising sheep are complex tasks requiring rich, traditional experience. In this aspect, Farmer Field School (FFS) platforms are now helping farmers’ education and empowerment in Azerbaijan and assist them in achieving sustainable food production and improve livelihoods through testing, validating, and adopting good agricultural and marketing practices. In Azerbaijan,...

Working to safeguard the food security and livelihoods of vulnerable rural families in Ukraine, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has distributed seed potato kits to 17 740 households from across ten of the country’s oblasts so they can plant food in time for the next...

Switzerland  Rebecca Clopath is a well-known Swiss chef renowned for her nature-focused approach to preparing food. Despite her impressive formation as a chef, Rebecca’s focus has never been to chase culinary fame and accolades, but rather to work with nature to produce fresh, seasonal dishes with organic and locally-sourced ingredients in...

his publication describes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s multisectoral voluntary approach to antibiotic stewardship in food-producing animals, developed as a collaboration between industry and government. It is a tribute to all those involved for their tremendous efforts, commitment, and continuous work to improve responsible use of...

Countries of Europe and Central Asia are united in protecting food production, supplies and trade, even during times of war. For days at the Thirty-third Session of the Regional Conference for Europe in Łódź, Poland, 50-plus FAO Members discussed possible paths and approaches for realizing this goal and for improving nutrition and...

Ensuring better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life – the “four betters” – in Europe and Central Asia is the end goal as discussions continue on the second day of the Regional Conference for Europe in Lodz, Poland. Today, FAO Members in the region have the possibility...

Peasant agroecology supports life-enriching systems and opposes life-alienating systems. It offers solutions to the major environmental, social, economic and political challenges we are facing today. It is a living practice, as well as a science and a socio-political movement, built and fostered by people over thousands of years. For aeons...

We are excited to announce that Access Agriculture podcasts are now available in English (https://accessagriculture.podbean.com/category/english/) and French (https://accessagriculture.podbean.com/category/french/). It is a great way to listen to farmers and experts from around the world talk about the topics you care about, as we have repurposed summaries of our popular videos as...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a new project in the Republic of Tajikistan to improve regulations for the protection and sustainable use of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge on the topic. The three-year undertaking, “Facilitating agrobiodiversity conservation and sustainable use to promote food and nutritional...

  Agriculture is a major threat to global biodiversity. A common claim is that large-scale agro-industrial farming is mainly responsible for the biodiversity decline, while smaller family farms are more wildlife friendly. Here we leverage a natural experiment along the former inner German border to estimate the causal impact of farm...

The project "Increasing longevity of Swiss dairy cows" aims to develop concrete strategies for optimizing longevity in collaboration with farmers.

In the countries of Europe and Central Asia, about half of the population lives in rural territories, with those people who produce the food we eat among them. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and addressing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the impacts of the ongoing war...

To address the impacts of the war in Ukraine on the global agricultural sector, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched a new $17 million project to help Ukrainian farmers save the upcoming harvest in July-August while ensuring export of critical agricultural goods to international...

Life in rural areas has its beauties and hardships. Yet, Qyaram Khachatryan said he would never want to exchange his village life in northern Armenia for living in a city, even after he lost virtually everything in the devastating earthquake of 1988. Lost everything but his good spirit and hope,...

The first UN Food Systems Summit will have a long-lasting impact on a global scale, despite the other historic events of 2021. This echoes across Europe and Central Asia, giving an impulse to a side event at the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development on the role of sustainable food systems in building back better in Europe...

The war caught Larysa Zueva while she was working a shift at a psychiatric hospital in Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine. She spent more than a month with her grandson in the hospital's shelter with about 200 other people. Despite the attacks, her work at the hospital continued. When the gas...

Sustainable fisheries management starts with scientific research – and an enormous amount of it is taking place across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, supported by the GFCM. Small-scale fishers have a central role to play in the monitoring and data collection activities that inform the work of fisheries scientists,...

FAO experts have been visiting farms across Montenegro this week, to collect up-to-date information and data to be fed into the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) system. Established by the European Union in 1965, the Farm Accountancy Data Network allows farm managers to keep track on their transactions at farm level...

There is growing momentum behind a shift to ‘regenerative’ agriculture in the UK, which can help to mitigate the climate crisis, say leading experts in the sector. “More and more people are seeing other farmers doing it [regenerative farming] and are happier for it,” said John Cherry, who founded Groundswell, the UK’s...