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...

Twenty-one Asian countries are participating in a roundtable discussion as part of the FAO’s World Programme for the Census for Agriculture 2020 (WCA 2020).  The roundtable discussion was opened by Kundhavi Kadiresan, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific. The census, held once every ten years,...

Les activités agricoles génèrent, parallèlement à la production de biens agricoles, des externalités négatives (coûts sociaux) ou positives (bénéfices ou aménités) non pris en compte par le marché. La réduction des externalités négatives et l’accroissement des externalités positives représentent des atouts pour la collectivité, qui peuvent justifier un soutien financier de la société....

In Vietnam rice is grown on 85% of cultivated land. Annual paddy (unmilled) rice production grew from 19.2 million metric tons in 1990 to 42.4 million metric tons by 2011, and in 2012, Vietnam exported eight million metric tons of rice. These yield increases were achieved through improved seeds, but...

Tubers, pulses and millets are important for the livelihoods and nutrition of poor farmers, especially in fragile regions. These crops are not only underutilized, but are also under researched. Ama Sangathan, a women federation consisting of 1200 indigenous women, have revived these crops in two blocks in Odisha, by their...

In the last two decades, visions of food sovereignty have inspired the origin of social movements, policy innovations, new experiments and debates. The perspective of food sovereignty is thinking by many authors as a ‘dynamic process’, without a clear conceptual and practical definition (Edelman 2014). Many social and rural movements...

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...

China is a large country with diverse agro-ecosystems and numerous different agricultural production systems. These agricultural systems are managed by more than 200 million households who provide agricultural products to meet the needs of almost a fifth of mankind. Agriculture plays numerous key functions, including not only the provision of...

EVENT TO BE HELD UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE CZECH MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE MARIAN JURECKA 11 − 12 November 2016, Krtiny, Czech Republic The conference is prepared for farmers, LAG representatives, rural NGOs and members of municipalities. The topic is business start-up aid for young farmers and good practise examples. The conference...

L’agroécologie est avant tout une discipline scientifique au carrefour de l’agronomie et de l’écologie. C’est aussi la somme des pratiques qui en découlent. Elle permet non seulement de transformer l’agriculture mais aussi de repenser l’ensemble des systèmes alimentaires afin de les rendre plus durables. Elle vise à conjuguer production agricole...

New agreement aims to ensure capacity development, farmers’ access to productive resources, knowledge exchange. India's Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) and FAO are strengthening their collaboration to boost rural development and reduce poverty in Asia and Africa via local initiatives focused on empowering rural women and youth.

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...

“Putting farmers first” is the main theme of Terra Madre Balkans 2016. 350 delegates will be arriving from 13 countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, The Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Italy and Albania). The Balkan region hosts a wide variety of farmers. For this reason,...

Formed in 2007, Food Plant Solutions Rotary Action Group (FPS) creates science-based educational materials, which: identify highly nutritious local food plants, explain how to grow them in a sustainable, agroecological way, detail the nutritional value of the plants and describe why human bodies require those nutrients. The resources created by FPS allows people to better...

Coinciding with World Food Day, the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), in a new report titled “Transitioning out of GM maize: towards nutrition security, climate adaptation, agro-ecology and social justice” makes a compelling case for South Africa to urgently transition out of GM maize production, to systems that are socially...

The food supply chain plays a substantial role in the European economy, connecting sectors such as agricultural, food processing industry and distribution that together make more than 5% of European value-added and 7% of employment. Furthermore, all European consumers are directly affected by EU food supply chain performance since food...

A new laboratory in the village of Tsilkani in Georgia has been furnished with all the equipment needed to conduct seed quality control – thanks to an FAO project financed by Austria. Operated by the Scientific Research Centre of Georgia’s Ministry of Agriculture with, the new lab is equipped with seed...

The International Symposium on Agroecology for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems has been jointly organized by FAO and CAAS, and the People’s Government of Yunnan Province of China, with the support of the Government of France. In his message from the Director General of FAO, Ren Wang, Assistant Director-General stressed that:...

150 peasants and eaters from 26 countries stretching from Ireland in the West to Georgia in the East and Norway in the North to Greece in the South of Europe came together from 16th to 18th September 2016 in the framework of the 3rd European Meeting of Community Supported Agriculture...

On the 30th of June, 2016, Dr Stephan Rist and Mrs Bettina Scharrer, from the Centre for Development and Environment and Dr. Moser, from the Archives of Rural History – both structures within the University of Bern, Switzerland – hosted the first workshop of a project called “The importance of solidarity...