The holistic gardening project in Emuhaya, Western Kenya, is attracting local and international acclaim. Bio Gardening Innovations (BIOGI) is equipping smallholder farmers to break away from monocultures and create thriving, overflowing “food forests” on their farmland. Maize, the staple crop of Vihaga and Kakamega counties in Kenya, is harvested twice a...

The environmental effects of agriculture and food are hotly debated. But the most widely used method of analysis often tends to overlook vital factors, such as biodiversity, soil quality, pesticide impacts and societal shifts, and these oversights can lead to wrong conclusions on the merits of intensive and organic agriculture....

Control of Foreign Fishing (CFF) explores options available to coastal states. It seeks to find the optimal combination of fee level, surveillance expenditure, and magnitude of legal penalties to minimize the risk of illegal fishing and maximize the benefits accruing to the coastal state. It provides an economic model that...

The Open Food Network is a global network of people and organizations working together to develop open and shared resources, knowledge, and software to support a better food system. Open Food Network provides an open source software platform that makes it easy to create an innovative, and independent community food...

An FAO training has been a turning point in Rita’s shea business. Now she is an advocate and employer of other rural women, promoting sustainable livelihoods that can offset deforestation in her region. 

Did you know that this squash I am holding has more vitamin A than golden rice?” - Angelita Mangangan, an organic farmer from the Philippines, for #IGrowYourFood

Ana Claudia Rauber es una joven agricultora familiar que vive y trabaja en su propiedad y de su familia en Cantagalo, estado de Paraná - Brasil. De los estudios de posgrado en Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural Sostenible, la agricultora transformó toda la propiedad en producción agroecológica, y contó con el apoyo de...

Every year, FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific celebrates the importance of World Food Day. This year, given the COVID-19 global pandemic and the disruptions it has caused to livelihoods and food security, our celebrations are muted, yet within this context, today’s World Food Day itself has become...

The commercialisation of traditional processed products from cassava, such as fufu, potentially offers new opportunities for income generation to rural households in Nigeria, Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Several options exist for the commercialisation of fufu, including the production of a shelf-stable product? This minimises the use of...

The preservation of fruit and vegetables by simple sun drying is practiced widely throughout arid and semi-arid areas, for example in Uganda. The use of low cost, solar drying technologies, can significantly improve product quality thereby providing practical opportunities for developing small-scale enterprise, particularly in rural areas, and creating employment...

This practice describes how Calliandra tree can be planted and grown in Uganda. First starting by seed collection and pre-treatment, then construction of seeds bed, seed sowing, and finally filling of polyethene pots with soil.

Una emergencia provocada por una enfermedad animal o por la presencia de una especie exótica invasora (EEI) puede generar graves consecuencias socioeconómicas,  medioambientales, sobre la salud humana y  los valores culturales, que  incluyen formas tradicionales de uso de los recursos. En este sentido, es importante identificar el riesgo e implementar medidas...

Ronnie Cumins, uno de los fundadores de Vía Orgánica y director de Regeneración Internacional, nos explica detalladamente esta gran iniciativa que significa un futuro brillante para el planeta.

Value chains are structured in ways that are unfavourable to smallholder farmers who often struggle to access finance, inputs and markets. An IIED webinar discussed how smallholders in East Africa can use technology to overcome those challenges and negotiate with buyers and input and finance providers from a position of...

The RPOA-SSF is a political commitment setting forth an ambitious roadmap for the ten years from 2018-2028. It prescribes concrete and coherent measures to address challenges and reinforce opportunities for small-scale fisheries, including by giving fishers a voice in the decisions that affect their livelihoods, by safeguarding environmentally sustainable fishing...

A small scale farmer shows us how she manages to grow crops in a dry area. She harvests rain water which she uses for irrigating the crops. This has helped her to adapt to the effects of climate change. To learn more about our work on promoting organic agriculture, please...

The queen bee is the sole reproductive female in the honey bee colony. That’s why the queen is very important to the colony due to her main task of laying eggs. If the queen's ability to lay eggs is disturbed, a new queen is needed for the colony. This technology...

In 2009, the Laos government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation entered into a bilateral agreement for the implementation of "The Agro-Biodiversity Initiative (TABI)" in upland Laos. The initiative sought to conserve, enhance, manage, and sustainably utilize the biological diversity found in upland farming landscapes to improve the...

Asia-Pacific’s smallholder family farmers produce most of the world’s food, yet they are facing a disproportionate impact on their livelihoods and food security due to the present coronavirus pandemic, a collaboration of FAO and advocacy groups warned today. The COVID-19 impact on the region’s rural communities, and particularly those in developing...

In recent years, along with the growing recognition of the rural gender gap in financial access as a key constraint to rural development, research has focused increasingly more towards analysing in depth the financial habits and patterns followed by women in rural areas, in order to produce observations and insights...