On the sidelines of the establishment meeting of the International Date Council held in Al-Ahsa Governorate - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the FAO regional office of the Near East and North Africa launched the FAO regional program officially to eradicate the red palm weevil in NENA region. The RPW is...

With its 55.5 billion cubic meters of annual water allocation, Egypt's Nile River accounts for 98% of all available freshwater - 85% of which is captured by farmers to irrigate their crops. But a combination of population growth and worsening climate change conditions means that farmers' water needs exceed what...

Every year in September, during ‘India Nutrition Week,’ nutritionists, health gurus, development professionals, chefs, and other food and nutrition experts converge across the subcontinent to discuss and promote the benefits of a balanced diet for a healthy lifestyle. While malnutrition rates have dropped significantly in India over the past decades,...

When an 8 000-year-old pearl was identified as the oldest ever found, it made global headlines. The natural pearl was found in 2019 during archaeological excavations at Marawah Island in Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The pearl industry was once the cornerstone of the UAE’s economy, when...

This report presents a summary of the main highlights and results achieved by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region from January to June 2022. The report is organized according to the four regional priorities: 1. Rural transformation and...

Gaza Foodways [towards resilient women-led urban agroecological food systems] is a transdisciplinary research collaboration between: the Palestinian Hydrology Group, the Gaza Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Platform, the University College of Applied Science (Gaza), and the Centre for Agroecology, Water & Resilience, Coventry University (UK) to contribute toward a ‘just transition’ to diversified low-carbon urban food...

This rapid gender analysis (RGA) explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality and food security in the Arab region, focusing on Iraq and the Sudan as case studies. This RGA is a collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food...

L’Association Tunisienne de Permaculture (ATP) soumettra, prochainement, au ministère de l’Agriculture, un projet de loi visant la promotion des systèmes semenciers paysans et la protection des petits agriculteurs qui utilisent ces systèmes. S’inspirant du cadre juridique proposé par l’Alliance pour la Souveraineté alimentaire en Afrique (AFSA), ce projet a pour...

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...

Agriculture could be the engine of recovery in the Syrian Arab Republic. However, for productive and resilient agriculture, farmers must be able to access good quality seed of well-adapted and preferred varieties of the major strategic crops. Before the crisis, the General Organization for Seed Multiplication (GOSM) was responsible for the...

Three years ago, 34-year-old Palestinian farmer Mohammad Jaffar Edris Khudair never guessed he would be pivotal to his community’s food security. He had been working in the same farming operation in the city of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip for two decades and had little hope for expanding...

CZU mobiLAB (developed at Czech University of Life Sciences Prague) represents a complex solution that enables the application of state-of-the-art molecular detection methods in remote or inaccessible areas. The principal advantage of the proposed solution is the concept of a mobile laboratory, which is unique in terms of its size...

The main objective of the present policy brief is to evaluate the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on the fishery and aquaculture sectors in Libya. It provides orientations, recommendations and mitigation measures at the national level to face with the pandemic crisis. The study was conducted by FAO sub regional office...

As winter approaches, farmers and herders in Afghanistan face many challenges: the recent droughts, along with the economic upheaval, and rural migrations leave more than 18 million people unable to feed themselves on a daily basis. FAO is working on long term and sustainable approaches to support farmers such as...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched today a training on the utilization of GIS for improving forest fires prevention, early detection, control and documentation. This training falls within the activities of “Enhancing the capacity of the forestry sector to control and manage forest fires in Jordan”...

Fix it with chemicals. That was the old belief. Traditionally, farmers in Lebanon depended on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to manage plant nutrition or plant pests and diseases. Most farmers believed that increasing the quantity of chemical fertilizers would increase the yields of their crops. But now the rapidly deteriorating economic and...

Even bees and their hives were not protected against the shells and bombs during the last aggression on the Gaza Strip in May 2021. Samar Al-Baa is a member of the Urban Women Agripreneurs Forum (UWAF) and is a beekeeper. Her bee farm is the only source of income for...

Food system transformation is needed to address the hundreds of millions of people without adequate access to food or water for a healthy life. Nutrition and malnutrition are closely linked to water for food, sanitation and hygiene. With 30 percent of the world’s population living in water-stressed environments, the impacts...

Due to prolonged droughts and rising heat, an increase in soil and water salinity levels are being observed in marginal areas, rendering agricultural lands unproductive. The situation gets aggravated in desert areas where freshwater resources are extremely limited and not replenished. Saline agriculture constitutes one of the farming solutions for...

This report presents the results of IFAD’s stock-take on agroecology. It assesses to what degree IFAD is supporting agroecology throughout its in-country portfolio across the five IFAD regions to the benefit of small-scale producers and sustainable food systems. It also identifies gaps and opportunities for scaling up and scaling out...